Am I the only one who was squeezing my brake levers wrong for 2 years?

I was at the bike co-op in Portland on a Saturday and some old guy watched me bleed my brakes and just started laughing. He pointed out that I was pumping the lever all the way to the bar instead of short quick pulls, which was pulling air back into the line every single time. I tried it his way with about 6 short squeezes and the lever got rock solid in under a minute. Now I want to know, did anyone else learn this the embarrassing way or was it just me?

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harris.uma29d ago

My buddy Marcus did the same thing with his shifter cables back in 2019, not brakes but same idea, and he kept wondering why his shifting felt mushy for months. Turns out he was yanking the cable all the way and never giving the housing time to settle, so it kept slipping out of tune. Short steady pulls fixed it in like five minutes once someone showed him.

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