[dennyo]

Hello,

I have a CB200 that I found in pieces and rebuilt years ago. I rebuilt a front caliper and purchased new pads from David Silver Spares. Now the CB200 front cable disk brake is famous for being awful, and my freshly rebuilt unit was no exception.

I decided too take it apart today dreaming of a hydraulic conversion... and realized my pad was all but stuck in the housing. I was able to use a screwdriver to pry it out. The housing and pad are all clean and the o-ring looks like new. I tried to reassemble and it take an immense amount of force to get the pad back in the housing past the o-ring. Once there, it does not move without more extreme force. I have never seen another functioning CB200 caliper assembly so I have nothing compare it to, but this cannot be how it is supposed to work. Is it possible the David Silver pad replacement is a different size? Or maybe the O-ring is the wrong size? I was hoping someone here might have an or idea or personal experience with this.

Any insight would be very much appreciated.

Thanks,
Denny

 

[crazypj]

I did loads of them, in late 70's and always had to 'polish' the bores of them with some emery cloth.
Put a hacksaw cut along the length of a piece of broom handle and wrap emery cloth around it.
You probably have to remove the paint around outside as well.
I would probably leave out the o-ring and let pad rattle, water gets in down the cable so mechanism needs re-greasing at least once a year whatever you do. (washing causes most problems)
Make sure the pivot on fork leg is free, that's another part that seizes up quite often.
It's generally easier to adjust ther atchet mechanism 'close' and only go one click at a time until brake works properly, it takes too long for the automatic adjuster to take up all the slack. You may be right about o-ring being too big, it only needs very slight drag to prevent pad falling out when wheel (rotor) isn't between pads

 

[dennyo]

I did loads of them, in late 70's and always had to 'polish' the bores of them with some emery cloth.
Put a hacksaw cut along the length of a piece of broom handle and wrap emery cloth around it.
You probably have to remove the paint around outside as well.
I would probably leave out the o-ring and let pad rattle, water gets in down the cable so mechanism needs re-greasing at least once a year whatever you do. (washing causes most problems)
Make sure the pivot on fork leg is free, that's another part that seizes up quite often.
It's generally easier to adjust ther atchet mechanism 'close' and only go one click at a time until brake works properly, it takes too long for the automatic adjuster to take up all the slack. You may be right about o-ring being too big, it only needs very slight drag to prevent pad falling out when wheel (rotor) isn't between pads

Thank you for your comments. These pads are definitely not a good fit as the sit. I agree with the removal of the paint, and the housing was cleaned and polished during the rebuild. However it is pretty obvious the o-ring is what is binding it up. I looked through my papers and it looks like I bought these pads from CMSNL in the UK. I went ahead and ordered a set from David Silver for comparison and try your suggested "tweaking" from there.
Thanks Again

 

[crazypj]

No problem, it's been such a long time since I worked on them I can't remember much of the specifics. Cable disk was also fitted on various 125's in Britain (CB125S single and the 125 twin that almost no one else got)