Our Tour Easy recumbents have linear-pull brakes on the rear and, for some reason, the noodle on Mary’s bike didn’t quite clear the frame: the cable bent slightly around the frame when the brake was active.
That made the brake difficult to adjust, as linear-pull brakes depend on an exact balance between the restoring springs on each side. With the cable pulling to the right, the left-side pad would contact the rim first and give the brake lever a mushy pull until the right-side pad clamped down.
A quick lathe session applied to some nylon scrap turned out an extension tube that fit between the steel noodle and the (slightly broken) plastic hoodickie that engages the brake arm. I used nylon (or something slippery like that) to make sure the cable wasn’t going to bind on it.
The noodle originally fastened into the plastic hoodickie with a small collar that snapped into a pair of holes, but I took a shortcut: JB Kwik Epoxy. The shank end of a small drill slip-fit into the hoodickie’s cable passage kept the extension aligned while the epoxy set up. The masking tape prevented the epoxy from drooling out through the two small holes: the cured epoxy plug will have a pair of retaining posts in exactly the right places. The smears on the plastic parts chipped right off, not that anybody will ever notice.
I’m depending on spring force to hold the noodle in the extension, which seems to be working just fine. This is one of those jobs where everything’s under compression all the time and the cable tension ensures good alignment.
The socket on the extension’s fat end is a snug fit to the collar swaged on the noodle; other noodle varieties seem to have other sorts of ends, so check to make sure this will work for you.
These pix show the brake assembly from below (the paint failed on the frame cross-member early on and I’ve been meaning to slather some rust converter on that spot for years. Sigh.) and the now-positive clearance between the brake cable and the frame with the brake applied.
And, for future reference, the dimensions…
The Smell of Molten Projects in the Morning 