Electric scooters can be loads of fun for kids and adults alike. They also make a convenient method of transportation for around-the-neighborhood trips.
However, keeping your electric scooter’s brakes fully functioning is very important for the safety of yourself or your loved ones. Today, we’ll help you understand how to adjust mechanical disk brakes on an electric scooter to maintain their performance.
1. Inspect and Adjust the Brake Cable
Check the brake cable to see it’s slacking. You can do this by pulling the brake lever. If you find out that there’s noticeable slack, use an adjuster to tighten the lock nut or plastic knob until the cable is fully stretched.
After adjusting the cable, turn the wheels and see if the brakes seem to drag. If they do, this means that the brake pads are too close, preventing the wheel from turning smoothly.
Loosen the adjuster to fix this and make sure to check how the brake responds to the brake lever.
2. Check the Tail Light
Try pressing the brakes and see what that does to the tail light. If the tail light doesn’t respond, it means that there’s something wrong with the brake-light connection. This can be pretty dangerous since tail lights are intended for the purpose of safety.
One way to fix this is to adjust the position of the cable clamp. Untighten the cable clamp bolt with an Allen wrench and push it a bit. Tighten the bolt and test the tail light again and notice how it responds.
3. Secure the Mounting Bolts
Your scooter’s brake system may not be working as it should because of loose mounting bolts. You can tighten them by making a caliper adjustment.
To carry it out, remove the casing from the rotor and separate the brake pads with adequate spacing. Then, use a 2mm Allen wrench to release the caliper from the rotor.
Release the brake cable by loosening the mounting bolt on the cable clamp with a 4mm Allen wrench to give yourself adequate space to mess around with the external brake pad.
Then, free up the disc’s adjusting tool a bit so that you can align the caliper precisely, and using a 5 mm Allen wrench, rotate the adjusting tool counterclockwise by one full turn.
In case there’s no motor attached to the wheel, you can loosen the adjuster by inserting the wrench through the flange. On the other hand, if there’s a motor, loosen the grub screw so that the chassis is free to move.
After that, you can align the chassis and rotor with the inner brake pad. Checking the seam under the chassis will help you align them correctly.
Now, you need to loosen the bolts with a 4 mm Allen wrench by making one full counterclockwise turn for each bolt. Pull on the lever while rotating the wheel and push down the bolt to align the caliper and the rotor.
You can test whether the adjustment has worked by spinning the wheel and noticing the drag. If there’s a significant drag, you might want to loosen the bolts a little bit more to get rid of it.
Pulling the lever to ensure that the brake light is working as it should is essential, too.
4. Reposition the Brake Pads
One reason why the brakes on an electric scooter may not be functioning properly is poorly positioned brake pads.
Turn the wheel and see if the pads look as if they’re getting dragged. Also, notice if there’s any scraping noise. If any of these signs are present, there’s a good chance that the brake pads are positioned too close to each other.
To get rid of this problem, loosen the mounting bolts on the end of the brake caliper with an Allen wrench and adjust the position of the brake pads. Keep moving the brake disc until there’s enough space between the brake pads while maintaining their parallel position to the brake disc.
Now, tighten the bolts and test the new configuration.
Final Words
That was a quick overview of some of the easiest ways to adjust mechanical disc brakes on your electric scooter.
By adjusting the brake cable and making a full caliper adjustment, you can guarantee that your brakes will never disappoint you. And the good news is that it won’t take you more than 50-70 minutes, but it’s all worth it so you or your kids can use the scooter safely.
