V brake help needed

Hello all, just ventured over from the road section to pick you guys brains on a v brake mount problem I've got.

Basically I removed the old V brakes from my beater bike (old rusty ridgeback tourer) and found that the brass bushes from the caliper pivot are left on the canti/V stud/mounts. Ok, I expected it would just slide off but it is stuck!!! the strange thing is that they are loose enough to move forward 2mm and will spin freely around the mount but just won't pull off from the front :x it's the same on both sides. It had cheapy Tektro Vs on there which must be as old as the bike (approx 10yrs), the springs are knackered so took them off to fit some equally cheap halfords replacements. The rear end was no problem, old removed and new fitted and working fine... but the front is another story!

Now I'm stuck with no front brakes on my work bike and I need to ride to work again on monday! Any help would be much appreciated.

Either place a flat spanner in the 2mm space and tap them off with a light hammer or grip with mould grips and tease them off. Are the boss bolts loose when screwed into the bosses? If they really won't budge then maybe the bosses will unscrew and new ones can but put on to put new brake on.

SJB7810":1adm7jjc said:

Either place a flat spanner in the 2mm space and tap them off with a light hammer or grip with mould grips and tease them off. Are the boss bolts loose when screwed into the bosses? If they really won't budge then maybe the bosses will unscrew and new ones can but put on to put new brake on.

Click to expand...

Failing that you should be able to hacksaw the offending old brake bits in no time a slight bulge or bend in the bosses could just be obstructing them from popping off.

Yes the bolts are very tight to screw in so you could be right that the bosses are slightly bent. Already tried mould grips and tapping off with a punch but with no results. I don't fancy replacing the bosses so might have a go at hacking the bushes off next.

Try a bit of heat on the bushes before trying to get them off.

Failing that, I would use a junior hacksaw to cut a spiral slot. As the bushes are brass, this should not take too long.

If you can heat up the parts that need to come off but not the bosses you should be able to tease them off without cutting.

It may be easier to just remove the brake bosses with the brass bushings still attached, if the bushes won't come off then it may be the bosses are bent slightly out of shape, and you may find that after battling to get the bushes off the bosses are in an even worse state or even unusable.
You can get new brake bosses for a couple of quid, or someone on here probably has some laid around doing nothing that they can karma to you.
Sometimes for the sake of a few quid you can save yourself a lot of hassle

Option 2: is to remove the bosses and replace with the bosses from another bike until you sort a more permanent solution (I'm guessing that as you are a Retrobike member you probably have two or more bikes in your man-cave ).

...but the chances are the bosses are welded on; and it's MOLE grips! :|

Well! it seems the old brakes were screwed in so hard the bosses had got squeezed at the ends making them slightly conical shaped, I'd have thought the bolts would have sheered first. I've had to file them down a bit now to get the new ones on. Weird!

Anyway cheers for the help guys. Heating wasn't any use as the bosses were about 0.3mm flared out at the ends so went in with the hack saw and cut the bushes off.