Cyclocross - Fine tuning Spooky cantilevers

Toeing in pads on high end/light weight cantiver brakes seems to be an issue these days. After installing sppoky brakes with kool-stop pads on my Alan (carbon tubes w/Al lugs and carbon straight blade fork) X33 posed the biggest challenge; which was significant brake chatter. After countless hours of looking online for remedies I decided to take it up myself. The most common answer was bending the brakes and eventually the brake boss', similar to old Mafacs; which i felt was too permanent. Spooky's are too fragile, especially carbon ones. I realized the best solution was bending the post of the brake pad. Place it in a vice, pad side down and tap the post, gently, with a mallet for the desired angle. It's worked well for me, especially resolving horrible fork chatter. It's not permanent to the bike, but only to the the span of the pad, which obviously will get replaced.

Hope this helps anyone dealing with this challenge as plagued me. It worked for my bike, maybe consider it for your.

Take care and good luck.

You know, when you pay such a high dollar for a compontent i really feel that they should work without having to bend chit. Not to mention having to file out pieces so that the brake shoe posts would fit and then sanding pads so that the pads were not toed in the opposite way and squealing like a dieing cat. I bought and installed the carbon spooky's, road them for a week and sold them to get pauls back on my bike. The adjustability of the pauls is infinite and overall any weight savings or better power is negligible. I will talk anyone out of them if they talk to me about brake purchasing, they were really one of the worst purchases I have ever made for my bike.

Hm. Yeah, I never really could agree with any "tuning" method that required the brute force application of a hammer!