Guide 05
V‑brakes
Medium / safety‑critical
Many small adjustments
Not hard like wheelbuilding — but death by a thousand small adjustments, and it’s
your stopping power, so it has to be right. The single most important compatibility catch
in the whole build hides here.
ELI5
Two arms pivot on bosses brazed to the frame/fork. The cable pulls their tops together, which
squeezes rubber pads onto the rim’s braking surface. All the fuss is just making both pads hit
the rim squarely, at the same time, with the right amount of cable pull.
The compatibility catch — match the lever to the brake
V‑brakes (“linear‑pull”) need long‑pull / linear‑pull levers. Pair them with short‑pull
(road/canti) levers and the brakes will feel wooden and barely work — a classic, dangerous
mismatch. Buy long‑pull levers with your V‑brakes. This is the thing to get right at
order time, not build time.
What you buy
Parts
Rim V‑brakes (front + rear) · long‑pull / linear‑pull levers · brake cable + compressionless
housing · cable‑end caps. Wet‑weather upgrade for later: salmon pads (Kool‑Stop) + a good
machined brake‑track rim (which your wheel build already requires).
How it goes
- Bolt the arms to the bosses; fit the spring into the correct hole (sets arm return).
- Thread cable through the lever and the “noodle” into the arm; set rough pad position.
- Pad alignment — pads hit the braking track squarely, not the tyre (death) and not
under the rim (slips off). Set height and angle.
- Toe‑in — the front of the pad touches a hair before the back; kills squeal.
- Cable tension — squeeze pads near the rim, pull cable snug, lock it; fine‑tune at the
barrel adjuster.
- Centre — balance the two little spring screws so both pads move in together and sit
equal off the rim.
Honest difficulty
No single step is hard; there are just a lot of them, and they interact — change
tension and you re‑check centring, etc. Budget patience, test hard before you ride, and remember
rim brakes lose bite in the wet (hence the salmon‑pad upgrade path).
Tools
Allen keys · cable cutter (clean ends are not optional) · a “third hand” pad‑squeeze tool helps ·
fine screwdriver for the centring screws.