This is feedback about a purchase and installation I received at Ernie's Bike Shop in 2013. I am posting it only now because it is only now I learned that what I had been sold at the time was not what I was supposed to get.
My bike is an LL Bean Run-A-Round Cruiser (made by Schwinn) that came with a simple, 3-pin & screw spring-tension-tightening braking system made by Promax. One of the brakes failed shortly after I purchased the bike and LL Bean paid for a replacement. Ernie's did the replacement with a Shimano Deore LX.
NO bike shop knew what was wrong with that Promax and no one could fix it. So many shop visits. I ended up learning on my own how the brake works - hours of research - and I found out it was in fact defective and needed to be replaced, which I did at Ernie's Shop.
Long story short, I know now how to repair a Promax 3-pin & screw spring tension braking system, and I wanted the same system back on my bike so I could take care of it myself. I explained this to Ernie's owner, I don't recall her name, and she recommended the Shimano Deore LX.
Well, the Promax 3-pin & screw spring tension system works like this: the pins allow you to make gross adjustments to the spring tension and the screw allows for finer adjustments. The Shimano Deore LX also has "3-pins" and a screw, but those 3-pins do not effect the spring tension, they only re-orient the braking pad to the wheel. My guess is this is to allow for different type bike frames. The only part on this brake that changes the spring tension, is the tiny spring tension screw. So in other words, if the spring fails [significantly], you need a new brake.
This is not the braking system I asked for. Now it is 5 years later, I'm just finding this out, and I can't do anything anymore about it.
I can't imagine this mishap was intentional but all the same it stinks. I don't care that I got 5 years out of the Deore, I would've had many more if I had gotten what I asked for. Plus now I am grossly inconvenienced again, exactly what I was trying to avoid by getting the braking system I wanted. (ie. I don't own a car and getting to a repair shop is difficult, not to mention the delay & cost of the repair)
Perhaps the [woman] shop owner who is not a mechanic, should not be making recommendations about bike parts. This in fact, is not the first time I was misinformed by her about a part. read more