About a year ago I purchased a new commuter bike. After almost a year of riding I decided to change out my brakes on my bike. The rear break was feeling very weak and had been adjusted to it’s limit. In the image above A and B are the rear brakes showing that I use my rear brakes too much, and that the groves that should help to clear dirt have been worn away. This is the equivalent of driving on bald tires.
The front brakes C and D show a different story. C has nice even wear, but much less so than D. The post that it was on was corroded and did not allow it to move freely and forced D to do most of the work. On the other hand D shows uneven wear. Angled slightly down and too low, the top of the pad is worn out and the bottom would still be usable. Rotating my pads halfway through there life would have pointed these problems out and would have extended the life of the pads.
Any way, a simple oiling of the chain and new pads makes the thing run like new. I really should have checked up on them earlier, and I need to use my front brakes more.
Note: It seems that .jpg files seem to load faster than .png files. I wonder what the best format is?
Front pads do about 80% of stopping on a bicycle. Depending on how you modulate your braking, how clean the rim surfaces will affect your pad wear. I have some ceramic coated rims made by MAVIC from the mid 90s that are meant to chew up brake pads, and afford good stopping distances in the rain.
At least you didn’t run them down to the limit line. (Maybe)
I would make sure that the distance between pad and rim are the same for each side of the brake and that the brake lever throw is where you like them. Personally, I run fairly close pads on the front, and a little less close on the rear. I like to modulate the rears more than the front since that’s what I mostly use when riding with friends and following their wheels.
You can do a simple test; get up to speed on your bike and only use the fronts to stop. Then do the same test with both front AND rear brakes. You’ll be able to figure out the amount of pressure to apply to your brakes to stop in the shortest distance. Obviously don’t do this while riding with other people.
The front brakes were fine, on the rear the words “wear line” were half eaten through. I really need to come up with a maintenance routine better than “the chain is not shifting well, must be time to oil it”.
JPEG and GIF, as far as I know, are the image formats that are most readily accommodated online. PNG aims at being a free, non-patented, replacement for GIF.
Funny that there is this thread: on my Cannondale F400, I shortened the brake cable on the front set so the handle wouldn’t travel so far, but now the brakes don’t work as well. Is there such a thing as not enough travel on the cantilever? It seems like the distance across the calipers (the cable span with the rubber protector) is too short now..
I think my pads are worn down, too. I do know that the rims get full of brake stuff and the counter-intuitive technique of steel-woolin’ 'em is used. That seems so wrong, especially since the rims started out painted black, I think.
I have wondered whether EZ OFf would clean up rims…
I am a dummy at these kinds of mechanical things so it’s off to the shop for me. I still have trouble with the Presta valves that came with the bike and the pump that I had to buy to inflate them. Took me ten minutes to remember how to set the gopher trap last night… I do have other talents, but…
these sound like V brakes ; yes there is a some distance where they work really well; someone at a bike shop should know that. What you don’t want to do is to lengthen the brake lever travel so it bottoms out against the handlebar BEFORE the brakes clamp fully. THAT WOULD BE BAD
Somewhere, in the way distant path was an article that said the stopping distance on a hard anodized aluminum rim was greater than an ordinary aluminum rim, hence the application of ceramic material to improve the braking capability. However, don’t quote me- the MAVIC rep wouldn’t be happy .
Personnally, if you ride long enough the anodization comes off and you basically have bare aluminum rim with striations (sp?) of anodized material circumferentially imbeded in the braking surface. I’ve heard of guys do the steel wool on the rim to clean them up, but I’ve use lacquer thinner to clean the icky stuff off and then applied another wash of isopropyl aclohol to make sure the thinner was off, and then finally water to clean everything off. This works for me. And they don’t make any funny braking sounds when you grab the brakes.
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