Brake pads

I’m on the fourth set of disc brakes that I’ve put a heap of miles on. A set of cable actuated Avids on the cross bike barely counts for this discussion, so three sets in actuality. Relevant are, first, the Avid Elixers that came stock on my hardtail and a set of Hayes Strokers. I ran the front Stroker on the Sette (160 mm rotors) with the Avid on the rear for years. And now I have a lot of miles on a set of Shimano XT brakes (resin pads, 180 mm rotors) on the Oiz. I’ve been feeling lately that the Shimano XT brakes are better. More stopping power. And when I use my hardtail recently, it seems way under braked.

This could be my imagination, a difference in maintenance of the older bike or a real performance difference. The hardtail now has Hayes Stroker brakes front and rear. The rotors are 160 mm, front and rear. Increasing rotor size is easy enough but one has to purchase the new rotors and new mounts for the brakes. Which costs money. The one thing I can do easily is the maintenance part. The rear pads have very little wear, but has been sitting in a box in the garage for about 7 years. They are aluminum backed (much lighter than the steel replacements) but I’m not sure what the pads are. I presume semi-metallic or organic because they never made any noise. The front ones were replaced with semi-metallic, steel backed ones within the past two years. I am pretty sure I bedded them in. But not well. I’m pretty sure I did both brakes at once and did the low speed slowdown only.

So first, I put on new pads, mostly in case I had inadvertently contaminated them with WD-40 or spray lube. I went with semi-metallic in the rear and metallic pads in the front. The latter are reputed to offer the most bite, but are also accused of being noisy. I’m going to see if that is true. I also went by the book for installation. I cleaned the rotors with isopropyl, and did the extended bed-in. One brake at a time. 10 slowdowns from about 10 mph, followed by five slowdowns from 15 mph. The front one squealed a little bit on the first two faster ones and then quieted down. This enhanced my confidence that maybe this bedding procedure was actually doing something.

The test ride returned a feeling of good braking, noticeably improved relative to before I did the maintenance. This may be the first set of metallic pads I’ve ever run and they do bite quite nicely. No squealing noticed after the bedding procedure. The initial ride also reported the brakes to be notably less effective than the Shimano XT brakes. To be surer, I will have to go back and forth with the other MTB to really compare. But it feels as though I’d managed to glaze the pads, contaminated them with something or dirtied up the rotor surface somehow. This little bit of maintenance helped. I did not bother to bleed the brakes and it is possible that this will likewise produce an improvement in brake feel.

Sidebar: I put the hardtail, which always feels light to me, on the scale. It’s 25.6 pounds in riding trim. Bottle cages and pump bracket mounted, real tires (Minion DHR II and DHF), sealant, bar ends, steel backed brake pads (which I now realize are really heavy compared with Al pads), longer than stock stem and bar, small cyclocomputer and sending unit. Oh and a light coating of dirt here and there. In stock configuration, with pedals, it probably runs low 23 pound range. The Oiz weighed 26.13 pounds out of the box with pedals and bottle cages mounted. Real tires added about 0.75 of a pound, not sure what the bar ends weigh.