Squeeling brake pads and cleaning brake dust from wheels.

[mstone]

I just use disc brakes and don’t worry about wearing through my rims. They sometimes sound like all the demons of hell when first starting out wet, but that burns off fairly quickly.

[Dirt]

The brake geometry changes with pad wear. It isn’t like a disc brake where the pistons really move at the same angle/geometry as the pads wear or cables stretch. That can often have as much or more impact on brake performance. That totally depends on the brakes.

I have some fancy-pants carbon fiber brakes that lose much of their braking power when the pads reach half way to the wear line. I can adjust the cam to compensate, but I end up just changing the pads most of the time. It is expensive, but that’s the price I pay for being a weight weiner.

The other thing to think about is that as your brake pads wear, the place that they hit the rim is different. With caliper brakes, the contact patch moves toward the tire. With cantilever brakes, the contact patch moves toward the spokes. Both are bad. You need to either replace your pads, or adjust where the pads contact the rim. Some linear pull brakes use a parallelogram linkage for the pads. That means the contact patch does NOT change as the pads wear. Shimano and Avid both made linear-pull brakes with this set-up. They were expensive, but often worth it.

Hope that helps a little. I think Nick Legan or Lennard Zinn did an article about this in Velo magazine recently. I’ll see if I can find this.

Dirt

[KelOnWheels]

Is that why my front brake sounds like a screaming banshee? I need to clean my rims?

I’ve gotta take the Tank over to the co-op this weekend anyway, my chain keeps falling off when I try to shift to the small chainring. But only on hills.

[Dirt]

@KelOnWheels 23745 wrote:

Is that why my front brake sounds like a screaming banshee? I need to clean my rims?

Many things cause brake squealing. Pad choice, dirty rims, worn rims, worn pads, pad alignment, brake linkage being loose or flexible and sometimes brake design. Most of the brakes that have chronic squealing problems based upon design are actually disc brakes.

I’m very fortunate. My favorite disc brakes gobble like a turkey when I lay heavily into the brakes. I’d pay extra for that kind of functionality… but end up getting it for free with Formula KG24 disc brakes.

My second favorites are the carbon brakes on carbon rims which sound like the Starship Enterprise is launching a shuttle craft. I love the freaked out looks when people hear that for the first time.

Rock and roll.

Pete

[OneEighth]

@Dirt 23743 wrote:

It is expensive, but that’s the price I pay for being a weight weiner.

The irony here is that you’ve got them on an old-school steel frame…

[SteveTheTech]

I hate the fact that the more expensive the wheel and brake combo the noisier they tend to be. The sound that wheels like Profile Designs full carbon wheels make when shifting and stopping would irritate me to no end but I am over the top when it comes to keeping everything shifting and braking silently. I’d probably stick with a heavier set of Cosmics.

[KelOnWheels]

@Dirt 23756 wrote:

Many things cause brake squealing.

It also occurs to me that my brake pads are 19 years old and probably ought to be replaced just on principle.

[bikesnick]

@Dirt 23756 wrote:

Many things cause brake squealing. Pad choice, …

interesting. one of my bikes is squealing and even shuddering. the pads are new, the rims have been cleaned (including lightly sanded and wire-brushed), and i have attempted to toe-in the pads. (the brakes are old-style side pulls so there are no conical washers).
the bike is an old schwinn worldsport that i rescued from a dumpster. it has been completely disassembled, cleaned, regreased, and reassembled. the tires/tubes and brake cables are new. i wanted to convert it to a fixed gear, but it has a freehub, and is now a single speed.
so, could the pads i purchased be incorrect? (the bike tech at the store told me the pads were the right choice.)

[Valerie]

ugh. I just bought my bike a little over a month ago, and the front brake (V-brakes) is squealing something awful if I apply any significant force to it. It’s driving me crazy. I cleaned my rims, and that helped a little, but they’re still squealing on more forceful stops. I should probably try to clean the brake pads myself before bothering the guys in the shop, right? Or should I just bring it to them (since all my maintenance is covered for the first year)?

[Bilsko]

@Valerie 34569 wrote:

ugh. I just bought my bike a little over a month ago, and the front brake (V-brakes) is squealing something awful if I apply any significant force to it. It’s driving me crazy. I cleaned my rims, and that helped a little, but they’re still squealing on more forceful stops. I should probably try to clean the brake pads myself before bothering the guys in the shop, right? Or should I just bring it to them (since all my maintenance is covered for the first year)?

Bike shop probably won’t do too much more than you could do yourself to clean the rims & pads. The bike isn’t old enough that you would have significant wear on the pads themselves yet. Alas, some brake squeal is just unavoidable. You get used to it. You don’t always have to call out “on your left” (cause they know already). It comes and goes. If its really bothersome and cleaning wont remedy, then new pads might be a $olution.

[DaveK]

@Valerie 34569 wrote:

ugh. I just bought my bike a little over a month ago, and the front brake (V-brakes) is squealing something awful if I apply any significant force to it. It’s driving me crazy. I cleaned my rims, and that helped a little, but they’re still squealing on more forceful stops. I should probably try to clean the brake pads myself before bothering the guys in the shop, right? Or should I just bring it to them (since all my maintenance is covered for the first year)?

Bring it to the shop and tell them the brakes are driving you crazy – tell them to toe in the brake pads so a smaller area contacts first.

[thecyclingeconomist]

@DaveK 34577 wrote:

Bring it to the shop and tell them the brakes are driving you crazy – tell them to toe in the brake pads so a smaller area contacts first.

Make sure to toe-in the trailing end of the pad…Link to read: http://sheldonbrown.com/brandt/brake-squeal.html

[thecyclingeconomist]

@Bilsko 34573 wrote:

Alas, some brake squeal is just unavoidable. You get used to it.

? I’d question this… I’ve ridden 20K miles on my road bikes without ever having a squeal… investing in good pads, and then insuring proper adjustment is everything… making sure the height, angle, yaw, and toe-in are right and setting it properly from the get go will solve the problem on nearly every bike out there. (Center-pull brakes too… though they just suck, both to adjust and in the power they provide).

[Rod Smith]

Toe-in will usually stop rim brakes from squealing. If you adjust the alignment and distance of pads to rims as they wear, you shouldn’t see significant loss of performance.

[Author]

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