Tandem Cycling - Brake Squeeling

I have quite a bit of pad toein on my front Avid Ultimate V brake and it was quiet for a while. Now that the brake pads have worn a bit they are starting to squeel. Any ideas on how to quiet them? Since I never have squeel on my road bike caliper brakes would replacing the shoes with road bike shoes help?

Will

Try toeing them out before trying new pads.

We had a simlar problem in our tandem, we tried toeing, sanding, filing, cleaning the rims... nothing worked. We replaced tha pads with CoolStop pads and it took care of it.

Try toeing them out before trying new pads.

Two questions:

-Is "toe in" bringing in the leading or trailing end of the pad in contact with the rim first?

-What's the best approach to adjust toe in/out? I've got Avid V brakes as well.

-murray

Two questions:

-Is "toe in" bringing in the leading or trailing end of the pad in contact with the rim first?

-What's the best approach to adjust toe in/out? I've got Avid V brakes as well.

-murray

Toe-in is having the leading edge of the brake pad set so it contacts the rim surface first.

Years ago you had to bend the brake arm with a crescent wrench but nowadays you'll find that most of our brake's use a ball & socket adjuster comprised of a convex and concave washer on each brake pad. To adjust the pads you loosen the brake pad bolt, put a shim under the trailing edge of the brake (anything will work, L-shaped folded dollar bill, scrap of paper, thick rubber band, etc..), and then align the brake pad to fall on the center of the rim while applying slight pressure to the brake lever. Once you have it all lined up, you snug down the brake pad bolt. For rear brakes on tandems, if you dont' have a helper you can make a cheap "third hand" brake tool out of a toe strap. Rather than putting it around the brake arms, I use it to pull the brake lever towards the handlebars until I get the right amount of tension. I only work one pad at a time and then do a final check to make sure the left and right are parallel.

You'll also find that Park Tools has a description of the process with photos on their Web site 1/2 way down the page at this URL: http://www.parktool.com/repair_help/howfix_linearbrakes.shtml

Or you can do it the easy and non sientific way. I just use an allen wrench and loosen the pad up some. Then point the front or the leading edge of the pad in and make sure you have the pad alligned with the rim and not touching the tire. Hold the pad in place and tighten it up. If you do not hold it then it may twist on you. Try it out to see if it squeeks. If it does, then repeat the process and toe it in even more. Keep doing it until its quite.

I just did it to my new Burley and could not belive the amount of toe in I needed on the Avid 7 V Bakes to make them quite. The factory setup was exreamly noisy so bad that my stoker complained rather profusely. 8-)

Change away from the pad you are using and try another manufacturer. I always us shimao blocks on my bikes, and put up with the squealing. At least I do not have to fit a bell.Another way out is to take the bike for a wet ride. This always seems to work for me.

. . . also, clean rims with rubbing alcohol to get off buildup on rim; also check/clean brake pads.
Then do the toe-in bit as suggested. If all else fails, get new pads.

Again a Brake Booster always help, increase braking power since the brake post don't flex and as a side effect reduce harmonic vibration in a big way,,the main reason why brakes make funny noises..

oviuslly i well set up brake is a good start, but is always some room for improvement

Do brake boosters help on all frames, or just the ones with lighter tubing?

Again a Brake Booster always help, increase braking power since the brake post don't flex and as a side effect reduce harmonic vibration in a big way,,the main reason why brakes make funny noises..

oviuslly i well set up brake is a good start, but is always some room for improvement

I have them pretty much in all my bikes with canti-V-brakes, from Klein adroid's to Yo-eddy's Yeti ARC's and My ibis tandem and in all of them the inprovement is noticiable, the wrost case of Noise (superDupperloud) of all of them was the fork in one of my Klein attitude's i try pretty much every trick I know (work at shops for about 10 years) and the only thing that fix it was a DKG brake booster...

actually on a side Note, some forks have the eyelets for the brakes to close(cross, tandem forks) so maybe will be dificult to find a brace that fits, or to far like on downhill rigid forks..If that is the case I make my own out of Fenolic resins or carbon fibre plates

NOTE: If anybody know were to find some DKG brake booster please let me know,, so far I have 13 of them but I need about 5 more to complete all my bikes with them...color kind of irrelevant, i can anodize them in no time..

Never heard that flexing brakemounts cause/create harmonics . . .

Never heard that flexing brakemounts cause/create harmonics . . .

sorry maybe i miss-use the word...

lets call it High frequency low amplitude resonating cacofonic wave...