shlammed

iTrader: (8)

Finally had time to install all of my new brake components last night.

Needless to say I am pretty excited to give it a rip!

Aero levers and dual pull calipers. by Shlammed, on Flickr

I reused the bar wrap after installing the aero levers. its not as nice as having used a fresh wrap, but its good until it wears out, gets dirty or I decide to change something.

hustler

iTrader: (6)

I cleaned it up a little a couple days later and let it breathe.


It still aches like hell, all the time.

hustler

iTrader: (6)

I'm learning to use my fingers again too. I can hold a tennis ball now, not a pen though, and I cannot make a fist. My index finger is in significantly worse shape than the rest.

hustler

iTrader: (6)

I just scored this for $30.

Now I need help getting it out of the car, lol.

emilio700

iTrader: (3)

In for video of you learning how to ride rollers. I suggest borrowing someones trainer for a while first to build some strength and flexibility before trying rollers.
Riding rollers with one hand on a table or wall for balance is no fun and wrecks your back. This, assuming you are new to rollers.

curly

iTrader: (25)

I'm thinking, learn from this guy, he has a comforting name:



But expect this:



and see if you can do this without rebreaking your arm:

Joe Perez

iTrader: (8)

You paid $30 for a battery-powered automatic weasel flattener?





So I installed these pads about two weeks ago. Today was the first properly wet & snowy day we've had for me to give them a thorough checking out.


(What the saddle looked like when I got back to the train station this evening.)


Now, I will admit that from time to time I am prone to hyperbole. I think that we all enjoy the art of exaggeration. But I want to be entirely clear that what I about to say is the pure, unadulterated truth:

These pads are ******* worthless. In fact, they are downright dangerous. The black rubber OEM pads they replaced were better.

In the dry, they require marginally more lever force than the stockers (probably owing to their diminutive size), and don't squeal quite as much.

But when wet, pulling on the levers with as much strength as I am able to muster produces an amount of braking force which is very nearly indistinguishable from "none at all." If I were to anthropomorphize the situation (which I am not going to do, since that would be hyperbole), I might say that it is as though, despite your best efforts to gain their attention, the pads are far too busy absentmindedly doing their nails and gossiping on the phone to their girl Laquisha about the various ways in which Darnell has recently dissed Shanaynay, with the phrase "oh, no he dihn't!" being uttered periodically by both parties to the conversation.

To be fair, there was a bit of ice on the rim starting out, but even after that was cleared, braking performance did not measurably improve. If anything, it got worse, since the pads no longer had the rough ice to scrape against.


Rim brakes: 0
The bus that nearly ran over me: 1


So, can anyone suggest a rim-brake pad which actually works when wet?

Leafy

iTrader: (1)

Yeah, **** a whole bunch of that, I'd rather go ride in the snow naked.

I still think you suck at life joe.

mgeoffriau

iTrader: (7)

SwissStop Greens are the ones that always get mentioned as the best of the best of the best for wet weather. Not cheap.

wiggle.com | Swissstop Flash Pro Green (High Performance) Pads | Rim Brake Pads

emilio700

iTrader: (3)

Good pads aren't cheap. Try Koolstop $$ or Swisstop $$$ brand. They have several different formulations. Go to an LBS (not walmart) and take to someone over 25 yrs old. I use Swissstop on my road bike with carbon rims and cyclocross bike with both aluminum and carbon rims. 2 finger stoppies no problem. Stoppie is braking hard enough with the front wheel to do a controlled nose wheelie.

Perhaps this a dumb question but you are relying on your front brake to get you stopped quickly right? If you are not using the front, but killing the rear lever instead, you're going to crash a lot. General rule is hard front braking only when you are going dead straight, otherwise you balance front and rear gently. Even in the wet though, the front will still stop you in roughly 25% the distance than rear only. Forgive me for prattling if you are already utilizing all the available deceleration.

Joe Perez

iTrader: (8)

Yeah, I'll be stopping by Zen Bikes in midtown tomorrow. This is just utter BS. Hopefully people on this forum know me well enough to know that while I don't spend money freely, I have no problem at all spending it when it's justified. $40 for brake pads is nothing if they actually work.

And don't worry- there are no Wal-Marts within bicycling distance of where I live.


I've owned a number of motorcycles, so I'm familiar with the concept of front/rear bias. In that context, the only time I ever used the rear brake was when sitting still at a stoplight- an SV650 will happily stand up on its front wheel with judicious application of the front brake.

And on my e-bike with cable disc brakes (a Giant Revel 1), I can lock the rear pretty easily if I'm trying to, even on dry pavement with Michelin Pilot City tires, so I'm quite comfortable with brakeforce distribution on a bicycle with *good* brakes.

In this case, I am literally squeezing both levers with such force that I am afraid of bending them, and the sum total of all brakeforce from both wheels combined is approximately zero. I'm not exaggerating- these Gray Matter pads are totally worthless when cold and wet. I'm getting more stopping power from putting my feet down and braking Flintstone-style.

In a perfect world, this bike would behave the same way as a bike with disc or hub brakes. I will pay a reasonable amount of money to achieve that. A set of expensive brake pads cost less than a trip to the ER followed by reconstructive surgery and physical therapy.

emilio700

iTrader: (3)

Decent rim brakes with expensive pads will usually stop just as hard as discs with almost as little finger effort but be a bit more difficult to modulate. Good rim brakes will also vary torque more with temps and moisture than good discs. So, plenty good enough to yank you to a stop but with less precision and predictability of discs. You'll get it sorted once you have good pads on there. I would periodically clean my brake tracks on the rims with isopropyl alcohol if doing a lot of wet riding. The rubber from the pads builds up, combines with chain lube, road grime and they lose some precision. With the rubbeer cleaned off, less gunk sticks to the brake tracks.

I've raced cyclocross with the wrong pads once or twice so I too have intimate knowledge of what no brakes does to ones emotional state

Joe Perez

iTrader: (8)

You want to know what the truly hilarious thing is? When I first laid out the plans for my second e-bike build a year or so ago, and noted that I was planning to use discs, Curly and skidude tried very hard to convince me that disc brakes on a street bike was a horrible idea, that they'd be hard to modulate, that I'd be flipping over the handlebars, etc.

After having ridden wish disc brakes for a year and a half, and now suddenly going back to rim brakes, it's like owning a Lotus Elise for a year and a half and then being forced to switch to a 1954 Nash Rambler. I seriously never want to own a bike without disc (or hub) brakes again.

And I understand the fact that the majority of riders exist outside of an environment in which being run over by a city bus is a real threat that you literally face several times per mile. I just wish that said people would drop the authoritarian act. Those of us who commute in the city view cycling through a rather different lens, and it's one that I'll freely admit I could not have fully appreciated when I was living in SoCal and riding 12 miles a day on nice, suburban roads with wide lanes and no snow.


You rim-brake Luddites have no idea what you are missing out on.

hustler

iTrader: (6)

I picked it up because it was $30, I'll learn to use it this summer. RHarris hooked me up with a trainer, it's about to get used for real, not just warm-up. I want to come back a stronger climber than when I left.

...if I come back.

hustler

iTrader: (6)

BTW, those two Ti plates in my arm were $4500 just for the metal.

Joe Perez

iTrader: (8)

JasonC SBB

All right can one of you explain the logic of those one-gear, brakeless, freewheel-less city bikes I see with hipsters balancing on them at stoplights?

Leafy

iTrader: (1)

Like bmx bikes? Like you just hold the pedals to stop bikes?

EO2K

iTrader: (37)

I'm disturbed I recognized the original painting in the above image as Vigo from Ghostbusters2

mgeoffriau

iTrader: (7)

Not like BMX bikes. Fixed gear. If the wheels are turning, so are the cranks. No freewheel at all.

Short version:

1. Track/velodrome bikes feature fixed gears and no brakes, for obvious reasons.
2. Bike messengers in big cities started using fixed gear track bikes.
3. The skill displayed in riding a fixed gear (as well as the counter-culture bike messenger scene) became a desirable thing.
4. Non-bike-messengers began riding fixed gears in an effort to appear part of an exclusive, esoteric movement.
5. Hipsters, having traded their human souls in exchange for an eternal quest in search of something you probably haven't heard of, seized upon fixies as an appropriate accessory to their ironic facial hairs, neon Ray-Ban Wayfarers, and American Spirit cigarettes.