Been lucky enough to be given a mint set of XTR M960 v-brakes that I’m going to be putting on my daughters bike.
2 of them are perfectly smooth, the other 2 are a bit rough.
What’s the best way to free them up?
They feel like there’s some grit in the linkages which is stopping them move freely…

Strip down de grease followed by hot soapy bath then rinse and dry re-grease and you should be good to go.

Its more likely to be the sleeve that sits on the canti boss. On XTRs there are bearings which can get a bit cruddy.
Its been a while since I had any but I recall there was a rubber seal you could take off and you could then flush them out with some thin lube, then some thicker and then some spray grease. I think.

Ah yes, remove the black discs, undo the grubscrew and the brake block linkage comes off. Fair bit of muck in there…

So I’ve isolated the problem to the main pivot bearing area. Any idea how I get to the bearing and are they replaceable?

There’s an aluminium hexagon under the rubber boot bit but the whole piece rotates? Softly held in a vice and unscrew?

Try just flushing it out with WD40 and then follow through with progressively thicker lube.
I suspect taking it fully apart would involve quite a bit of faffing and fannying about with small bits.

I’ve tried with thin lube, will give WD40 a go. Not really able to get at the bearing though

WD40 seems to have done the trick, thanks BY! 🙂