Last night I fixed the brakes on my city bike. One of the arms of the v-brakes wasn't moving. This happened both on the front brake and on the rear brake too. I asked a guy from the bike shop how to fix the problem and he said that probably it got rusted or some dirt caused the brakes to brake.
I went home and unscrewed the screw but the brake arm didn't come loose. I gave up after a few tries and abandoned the project. After I turned on my laptop I searched on the web for a tutorial to fix v-brakes and I found this video:
Although my brakes are a bit different I got the tools and unscrewed the screw again. This time I got a screwdriver and tried to force the brake arm. I didn't succeed at first but then I started to twist the arm and it started to get loose. I found out that a lot of rust was causing the brake to malfunction.
the rust
the tools
I cleaned the brake with a fine sand paper and then like the guy does it in the video I greased it up an resembled it. It was working so well that the other side, which was working before, got stiff. So I had to clean the other side too.
After fixing the front brakes I did the same thing to the rear brakes to. The rear brakes came off a lot easier.
The rear brake got stiff a bit but maybe it will recover in a few days, if it doesn't I will lube the cable. I didn't line up the brake pads with the rims eater because I'm expecting the springs to get loose a bit after they were stiff for a while.
