swiss stop blue pads

[JimK]

I'm nearing 20,000 miles on my original pads & decided not to push my luck too much. So new pads went on today. The big surprise was that the rear pads look more worn than the front pads. I think I have a tendency to use my rear brake as a drag on long descents & to save my front brake for when I really need to stop. Mostly though I just sit up tall and let my baggy shirt catch the wind coming down the big hills!

[mickeg]

Keep the old ones for spares.  Looks like they still have lots of miles.

[Dave Whittle Thorn Workshop]

The problem I find with them after they wear past about 50% is that they don't brake very well in the wet as the water dispersal groves have gone.

[jags]

pretty good even ware, bin the old stick on new to be sure to be sure


anto.

[mickeg]

For comparison, the attached photo is of the brake pads I took off my bike after I finished my Pacific Coast tour.  Lots of steep hills on that trip.  The rims were normal, not CSS rims.

[PH]

I'm nearing 20,000 miles on my original pads

have you tried using non CSS pads yet?
I can't remember how many miles I'd done but once the rim surface was smooth I changed to some of the normal pads I use on non CSS rims and the braking was at least as good and the wear rate acceptable.

[mickeg]

...
...
I can't remember how many miles I'd done but once the rim surface was smooth I changed to some of the normal pads I use on non CSS rims and the braking was at least as good and the wear rate acceptable.

Thanks for posting, I suspected that might be the case, but I think you are the first whom has tried that and reported on it here.

My Koolstop CSS pads are not worn far enough to need changing yet, plus I have another spare set.  But by the time the spares are shot my rims should be smooth enough to warrant trying the softer pads.

[JimK]

Bizarre experience today. I rode down to Salt Lake City, about 50 miles, and took the train back. I've done this quite a few times by now. There is a series of bike paths almost the whole way. There is one little connection that I had hope would be in place but I discovered isn't... oh well.

When I left the house, my brakes were working. But about half way to SLC... what? I am missing one brake pad off my rear brake!?! How could something like that happen?

Fortunately the path is extremely flat so it wasn't a big problem. I don't think I damaged my rim at all.

One fun coincidence.... there is a nice bike shop on the north side of SLC, where I come into town. In the past they've not been open on Mondays. I thought, hmmm, tomorrow is a big Utah holiday, Pioneer Day, and lots of shops are closed. Maybe this shop will be open? So I adjusted my route a little to swing by, and, wow, now the sign on the door says they're only closed on Sundays. Of course they didn't have pads for CSS rims, but that's no big deal. But it turned out that their new hours started today! This was the first Monday they were open!

My best theory is not a very good theory. But I did stop for a break at a grocery store along the way. Plenty hot here - upper 90s F I would guess. So I ate my banana in the store with their nice air conditioning. When I went out, there was another bike next to mine... and then a young man, I'd guess 14 or 15 years old, walked up to it. Perhaps I was the target of some teenage prank? Far fetched, but how does a brake pad fall out otherwise?

[mickeg]

Bizarre experience today. ...
When I left the house, my brakes were working. But about half way to SLC... what? I am missing one brake pad off my rear brake!?! How could something like that happen?...

That little pin that goes into the pad is intended to keep the pad from sliding out of the holder if you have the brake on while you roll backwards.  If you forgot to put the pin in or if the pin fell out, ...

Decades ago I had a bike where I remember the pad coming half way out of the holder when I was using the brake to avoid rolling backwards down a hill.  I do not recall the exact situation, maybe it was uphill and I stopped at a stop light or something like that.  Decades ago, brake pad holders like that never had pins in them, they relied on friction to hold the pad in the holder.

Or, on the pad holder there is a rotation arrow, if you put the pads and holders onto the bike with the right side on the left, etc., then the pin would keep the pads in the holder when braking - but that pin is tiny and I could see a hard brake put enough force on the pin to cause the pin to be insufficient for the task.  But I doubt that was what happened because if that happened you should have noticed when the pad slid out and you lost half your braking power while the metal on metal noise should have alerted you to something being not quite right.

[John Saxby]

Jeez, Jim, glad it happened on a flat bit of ground, and not during a canyon descent... Trust you can get the replacement you need?

Very good detective thinking, George, assessing the possibilities--there's no substitute for detailed knowledge + relevant experience.

[JimK]

Right now I am thinking... what fun, on my rear brake now I have a Swiss Stop Blue pad on one side and a hmmm something else on the other. I'll just ride like that for a while & keep an eye on how they wear. It'll be a nice experiment!

But yeah I need to order more brake pads. That was a brand new pad that disappeared! Rats!

[il padrone]

The problem I find with them after they wear past about 50% is that they don't brake very well in the wet as the water dispersal groves have gone.

This happened to me yesterday. In very heavy rain, on a descent to a right turn; it was mighty disturbing 

The bike has now done 50,000 kms and this is the second set of Swisstop Blues. The first were changed over at something like 30,000 kms. The Andra 30 CSS rims seem to now have scrubbed off all the carbide surface, so maybe one option is to go back to regular pads like Koolstop Salmon??

For future plans, does anyone know whether Thorn have designed a rigid front disc fork? I know they recommended against this back in 2010, but in the intervening years SO MANY touring bikes have been built and used all around the world with disc brakes on rigid forks that perhaps the advice (and fork availability) merits a change.

Any advice is valued. I would really love to be able to fit a rear disc-brake, and a matching front disc-brake as well. It will be a very expensive process but ultimately of great value (and safer braking in the wet).

[il padrone]

Hooray!!!

Question now solved by looking a bit further. A Thorn Nomad front disc fork 

[Matt2matt2002]

Maybe.its.my rims but I find the Blue Swisstop bad in rain even when new. Let alone partly worn.

[lestat_12345]

I agree with you Matt. My Swisstop blue pads have always performed badly in the wet regardless of age. I'm currently using my other Rohloff which I built into a non-CSS rim with Kool Stop salmon pads. These pads brake so much better in the rain that I am reluctant to use the CSS rim again. I'll probably just build the other Rohloff into a non-CSS rim as well. The only downfall is that the brake pads only last a fraction of the time you get with CSS pads so there is a much higher maintenance cost. But I'd rather have my improved braking over cost savings any day.