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<\/p>\nWho cares about the little retaining clip dohicky thing anyway?\u00a0\u00a0 That is what I have often thought about the clip that goes onto the end of the post used on XTR brakes to keep the pads and the spring\u00a0in the calipers. I have also thought\u00a0of these\u00a0as being along the same lines as “lawyer tabs” on forks.\u00a0\u00a0 I mean the post is screwed in anyway.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Okay so I noticed the clip had went missing a week ago.\u00a0 No big deal.\u00a0\u00a0 Well\u00a0out on a ride a couple of days ago it became a big deal.\u00a0\u00a0All of the sudden my back brake went completely dead.\u00a0 Lever to grips and no pumping would help.\u00a0\u00a0I was also in the middle of\u00a0precarious\u00a0dip in the trail so it was “exciting” to get\u00a0through the section and then get stopped.\u00a0 I check out the brakes and holy smokes!\u00a0 There was nothing back there.\u00a0\u00a0 Both pads, spring and retaining pin gone.\u00a0\u00a0 At that moment it hit me that I was a good\u00a0ways from getting back to a street where\u00a0I could limp\u00a0back “home”.\u00a0\u00a0 I was also nearly at the highest elevation I would be for the entire ride.\u00a0 Every route I\u00a0knew of to get off of the mountain\u00a0(I was exploring a new area for me) involved a white-knuckler descent.<\/p>\n
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Well I was not going to get\u00a0anything fixed if I did not\u00a0find my brake\u00a0bits.\u00a0\u00a0 The good news was there was only about a\u00a050 yard section of trail from where I knew by brakes were working perfectly to the spot of total failure.\u00a0\u00a0 Not too far of a distance, but the trail is\u00a0only about 12″ wide and\u00a0dense foilage\u00a0is all\u00a0along the edges.\u00a0 So off in search of I went.<\/p>\n
When I was growing up in North Carolina my Dad and I did a lot of hiking and one of our hiking activities was looking for Indian arrowheads and artifacts in argriculture fields and along the river and lake banks.\u00a0\u00a0 After tiling and fresh rains was considered prime time for looking for these.\u00a0 It was good Father-Son times.\u00a0\u00a0 Beside it being a fond memory, the point I bring this up is that you develop a skill for scanning the ground and looking for stuff when you do this activity much.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0I went into scanning mode and\u00a0started looking for the brake bits.\u00a0\u00a0 I first made a quick pass\u00a0along the trail just to set my end\u00a0points and see if I could get lucky.\u00a0\u00a0Nothing on the quick stroll.\u00a0\u00a0 The second time down\u00a0the trail I went much slower and was focusing on just the 12 inches of the trail.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0I managed to find one of the pads.\u00a0\u00a0 How can I fix this with one pad?\u00a0 Better\u00a0keep looking.\u00a0 One more really slow pass\u00a0netted me\u00a0the\u00a0other\u00a0pad that was laying about three inches off to the side of the trail and was paritally hidden by leaves.\u00a0 What a lucky bastard I was.\u00a0\u00a0 It\u00a0had taken about 40 minutes so far and I was not interested in prolonging this anymore.\u00a0 Time to figure out what\u00a0to use for the post and spring.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 My zip ties were too big and while I had some wooden matches for a retaining pin, a couple of rides ago I gave up all of my tape to boot a friends sidewall so I was out of something easy to hold the matchstick in place.<\/p>\n
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There is one thing in bountiful supply in\u00a0Japan, bamboo.\u00a0\u00a0It is nearly perfectly round, smooth and comes in an assortment of diameters.\u00a0\u00a0 I stripped a piece of bamboo of its\u00a0leaves and slipped it into place\u00a0folded it over and the\u00a0small end was flexible enough to allow me to use it as binding string.\u00a0\u00a0 Sweet!<\/p>\n
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Now what to do for a spring?\u00a0\u00a0 Bamboo to the rescue again.\u00a0\u00a0 I got a bigger diameter section of bamboo this time and cut out a section\u00a0slightly bigger\u00a0than the normal gap in the pads.\u00a0\u00a0 I then split the bamboo, cut to \u00a0length and wedged it between the two pad backings.\u00a0 The folded over piece of post bamboo also served to hold my spring piece in place.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0After a\u00a0few quick\u00a0tests I was stoked to see the green bamboo was providing enough spring action.\u00a0I felt confident enough with the setup\u00a0to\u00a0not\u00a0bail on the ride.\u00a0 I\u00a0ended up riding about another 20 miles that day.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The following day on my way our for a ride, I\u00a0swung\u00a0by a local shop and picked up a set of pads, a spring and retaining pin.\u00a0\u00a0 I\u00a0put it in my\u00a0pack\u00a0so\u00a0I would have a\u00a0“spare” in\u00a0case my bamboo\u00a0should break. \ud83d\ude42\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
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