Disc brake pads and the various flavors

[hozn]

My $0.02.

Traditionally I have only used metallic/sintered pads. I buy these because they wear much slower and survive wet stuff; it sounds like you’re already cued into that feature. Yes, they stop just fine in regular/dry conditions too. There are differences in behavior between different brands, so I’m not sure I could say that metallic grab harder than organic. Maybe as a rule? I don’t notice a big difference. Maybe it’d be a bigger difference if I were using mechanical discs; the SRAM hydros grab pretty hard regardless of pads.

But, yes, metallic pads [at least the ones I have used] are significantly louder than organic pads. Normally I don’t really care, as I don’t mind being loud, but a few times lately I’ve really startled pedestrians when braking even lightly, so I might mix & match my metallic and organic.

As a result of them being loud I think I’ve resolved to switch to organic on my road bike, since that is more likely (at least lately) to be ridden around others and in those situations of riding in close proximity I feel like a scream of brakes is liable to cause an accident. And generally my road bike is being ridden in drier weather, so hopefully pad wear won’t be terrible.

I would not swap pads for conditions, no. But if I did, I wouldn’t swap rotors. With 100% metallic pads I wore a rotor down to ~1mm (I think they start at 2mm) over the course of about 25k miles. So I don’t think rotor wear is a major concern, at least I’m not letting that factor into my pad-compound decisions.

I’ve had good luck with Jagwire pads as cheaper alternatives to OE. Also KoolStop pads have been fine. I haven’t bought any SwissStop pads, mostly because they’re pricey.

[Crickey7]

I’d go with modulation over pad life. Assuming you can replace them yourself, they’re cheap enough that the extra cost is not significant.

[hozn]

I’m not sure there’s any salient difference in modulation. I’d suggest buying a set of sintered and see how they compare with your setup. I have metallic on my MTB and modulation of those XT brakes is fabulous.

The real downside to organic is when you’re riding in the mud and you burn through an entire set of pads. Having to carry extra pads (and any special tools you may need to extract your pads) may be a strong reason to avoid organic for any bike that is going to be ridden in wet gritty conditions. (I have no plans to ever put organic on my MTB again.)

[Crickey7]

This appears to be a gravel-ish bike.

[hozn]

@Crickey7 159183 wrote:

This appears to be a gravel-ish bike.

Yeah, my example of Shimano MTB was just to say that modulation depends on more than pad compound (and I haven’t noticed any difference in modulation that I can attribute to pad compound). My experience with Shimano has been that modulation is better than SRAM, so my brakes grabbing hard with organic or metallic on SRAM is probably not a useful data point. (I like the SRAM brakes; they just take a lighter touch and less finger movement to fully lock them up.)

[huskerdont]

Piggyback question? I put some TRP Spyres on a new bike and they are a bit spongy. (They’ve been bedded.) I feel like I need to adjust them every few rides or I need to pull the lever all the way in to stop with just the rear brake. When adjusted, there isn’t any visible space between them and the disc, and prior to adjusting, there’s hardly any. The pads are semi-metallic. I didn’t change the cable housing and don’t know if the housing for the bike is compressionless or not, but I’m guessing it’s not and I need to replace it with compressionless. Is there any way to tell if the housing is compressionless without cutting it? The bike is internally cabled, so there’s not that much housing anyway, but comparing to BB7s on my mountain bike, they are less grippy, and I don’t think that should be the case.

[bentbike33]

@huskerdont 159187 wrote:

Is there any way to tell if the housing is compressionless without cutting it?

Standard brake cables have an underlying spring-like spiral metal band between the covering and the lining (essentially perpendicular to the cable), while compressionless is constructed like indexed shifter cable housing using metal strands that run parallel to the cable. The bit of space between the coils in standard brake cables allows them to bend, but also compress. You should be able to tell what kind of housing you have by examining the cut end (minus any ferrule).

[Birru]

@hozn 159180 wrote:

I’m not sure there’s any salient difference in modulation. I’d suggest buying a set of sintered and see how they compare with your setup. I have metallic on my MTB and modulation of those XT brakes is fabulous.

The real downside to organic is when you’re riding in the mud and you burn through an entire set of pads. Having to carry extra pads (and any special tools you may need to extract your pads) may be a strong reason to avoid organic for any bike that is going to be ridden in wet gritty conditions. (I have no plans to ever put organic on my MTB again.)

This is what I’ll probably do. Order a set of Shimano metallic pads and ride in a range of conditions and decide if I can live with the compromises 24/7. If I can’t then I’ll just swap to metallic for the worst conditions. The RS505 brakes are pretty dang easy to service, but I’d prefer not to do that in the field, in the wet. You said you got about 25k miles out of a set of rotors too. If I got half that rotor life with metallic pads I’d still be quite satisfied.

@Crickey7 159178 wrote:

I’d go with modulation over pad life. Assuming you can replace them yourself, they’re cheap enough that the extra cost is not significant.

My week old resin pads were practically worn down to the spring after one (1) muddy ride. I can’t live like that.

[anomad]

One of my riding buddies back in Colorado, who rode almost exclusively off road, used one organic and one metallic on the same caliper. The compounds he chose wore about 2-1 so swapping out wasn’t an issue. He said it had the grab of the organic on cold braking but didn’t fade on long descents because of the one metallic. I’ve never tried it, but don’t be afraid to think outside the box. If you’re really burning through pads, fitting the largest rotors your set up can handle might help too. If all else fails you can just ride slowly on level ground

@Birru 159191 wrote:

This is what I’ll probably do. Order a set of Shimano metallic pads and ride in a range of conditions and decide if I can live with the compromises 24/7. If I can’t then I’ll just swap to metallic for the worst conditions. The RS505 brakes are pretty dang easy to service, but I’d prefer not to do that in the field, in the wet. You said you got about 25k miles out of a set of rotors too. If I got half that rotor life with metallic pads I’d still be quite satisfied.

My week old resin pads were practically worn down to the spring after one (1) muddy ride. I can’t live like that.

[vvill]

You were braking on the C&O?

I don’t have much input on this as I’m not even sure what kind of pads I use. Other than Hilly Billy Roubaix I’ve never worn through pads abnormally fast. I’ve read that in really muddy conditions solid rotors (no holes or cutouts at all) will do the best job at keeping pad wear down.

I don’t bother keeping rotors with pads as I switch out wheels all the time.

[Birru]

@vvill 159203 wrote:

You were braking on the C&O?

That’s the thing! I just stopped for nature breaks or to swap wet clothes. The wet conditions basically kept filling the calipers with crap that I guess acted like a grinding paste. I used my water bottle to spray the gunk out as best I could.

[huskerdont]

@bentbike33 159189 wrote:

Standard brake cables have an underlying spring-like spiral metal band between the covering and the lining (essentially perpendicular to the cable), while compressionless is constructed like indexed shifter cable housing using metal strands that run parallel to the cable. The bit of space between the coils in standard brake cables allows them to bend, but also compress. You should be able to tell what kind of housing you have by examining the cut end (minus any ferrule).

Turns out the housing was compressionless. The problem was that with the different caliper sitting in a slightly different place, the brake housing was just a tiny bit too short, so it was able to get cocked just a bit where it sat in the caliper. Put on a slightly longer housing, readjusted the brakes, and the braking is perfect. I was relieved that less-than-perfect was good enough for the Skyline ride.

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