It's really windy today, and the rain tarpaulin makes a good sail for the bike I'm storing on my balcony.
Short of actually mooring the bike to something, I decided to just fasten the tarp a bit tauter and tying down the brake levers to stop the bike rolling back and forth.
With mechanical brakes I would have no concerns about this, but now I'm wondering: are hydraulic brakes also ok with it? After all, they're not static but kind of “self-adjusting”, and the pistons move out over time as the pads wear down.
Does this cause any problems if the pressure is kept up for not just minutes as it might in a normal descent, but days on end?
@AnAnt remarked that car handbrakes are routinely used in fixed position when the car is parked. I thought about that myself, but I don't think it's a really relevant point because a) most parking brakes are apparently not hydraulic, but mechanical or electromechanical and completely separate from the main brakes, and b) the fact that it's possible to design hydraulic brakes to be pressurised continuously does not imply that all hydraulic brakes are able to do this.
(So, if anything, cars suggest that it's not a good idea to keep bike brakes locked.)
