Tandem Cycling - Squeal!

Ok, I know this has come up before, but I'd appreciate any advice you may have. Our front brakes squeal like there is no tomorrow.

Here is our setup:
- 2005 Co-Motion Speedster with standard Co-Motion CroMo fork.
- Avid Single Digit 7 V-Brake with travel agent
- Yokozuna salmon colored brake pads (http://store.yokozunausa.com/yomtbthbrsh.html)
- Velocity Dyad rim

The pads are properly toed in, I cleaned the rim with an alcohol solution, but the pads have been squealing from the moment I installed them. The previous pads (Wrangler II) never squealed and are still on the rear rims. When I brake using only the rear brake, no squealing is noticable

The only thing I can think of is the age of the pads. When I bought them, the store found them in the bottom of a box, and may have had them for a while. Do these pads deteriorate with age?

Again, any advice is appreciated.

Duppie

I have similar brakes and cured the squeal by using kool stop salmon / black pads.
Also take the brakes off the frame and grease the mounts.
The squealing was gone for quite some time but returned the other day, I think we probably got something on rims and they need to be cleaned.

I tried absolutely everything on our Davinci which came with the Koolstop black/salmon pads. I now have Koolstop salmon pads which may have solved the problem, but I never had to stop really hard on yesterday's 90 mile ride. Front setup is an Avid 7 V-brake with TA.

I have similar brakes and cured the squeal by using kool stop salmon / black pads.
Also take the brakes off the frame and grease the mounts.
The squealing was gone for quite some time but returned the other day, I think we probably got something on rims and they need to be cleaned.

I may try your suggestions next. I have an unopened pair of kool stop salmon/black pads that I may install to see what happens. I haven't taken the brakes off yet, since we'only had it for 8 months or so. I will grease them as well
Duppie

I have KoolStop pads, and they also make a racket. i decided that it is functional. most of the time that i apply brakes, i want people around me to know i am there! some fellow riders on a group ride even said it helped them plan their stops, because i always need to apply brakes first in the group!

We have similar set-up. Sometimes they squeal, sometimes not. Seems to be worse when the humidity is high. It tends to be quite dry here and the rims and pads get dusty. This seems to decrease squealing.

The other thing that I have found is that when rubber transfers from the pads to the rim, the pad rubber and rim rubber wants to stick to itself & sets up a shudder & then squeal. I have in the past cleaned the rubber off of the rim with a solvent and scotch-brite pad and/or wet-dry sandpaper.

Swap front pads to the back; back pads to the front. See what happens.

I have exactly the same squeal problem with salmon Koolstops on our front brake, no matter what I do. It is affected by humidity: on a recent trip to CO with the 50+ group, no problem; back in FL, off they go again, until today, when the humidity is low and they only uttered a very quiet squeak.

We've been using the Salmon Koolstops for maybe a year and find they squeal occasionally, usually after I've done a thorough bike cleaning.

My experience is that this is common to at least a few other compounds as well.

"Riding the brakes"; pedaling while keeping the brake partially applied, for a hundred yards or so has always fixed this for me with the Koolstops and other brands until last week.

We recently had a few rides with more descending than usual between washes and then a day out on flats where the rear brakes squealed like the proverbial "stuck pig" for the duration of our ride. Afterward, I took the pads off & saw what was probably a slight build-up of rim transfer. I wiped the brake surface with dry terrycloth a couple of times & put it back on.

Problem solved.

I have similar brakes and cured the squeal by using kool stop salmon / black pads.
Also take the brakes off the frame and grease the mounts.
The squealing was gone for quite some time but returned the other day, I think we probably got something on rims and they need to be cleaned.

I tried this. I took off the brakes and greased the mounts. While I was at it, I removed the smudge from the brake pads with alcohol and then roughed them up a bit with sand paper.
If anything it has become worse...

Next up, I will put back the original pads, just to see whether they squeal. Then I will put the Koolstop pads on and see what happens.
Duppie

What happened when you tried ZonaTandems suggestion on swapping the pads front to back (post #7)?

Duppie, I know what you're going thru! I, too, WANTED to run Kool Stop salmons for the braking power, and the list of stuff I went thru, to be perfectly honest, dwarfs yours! I cleaned rims, I filed pads, I toed them anywhere from dead flat to so far in I had to loosen the brake cable at the binder bolt, I tried four different brakesets, three different forks, etc, etc. So I feel your pain, brother, I feel your pain!

I spent 15 years in bike shops way back when we saw a LOT of touring bikes with cantis. I used to brag that I could make ANY brake stop squealing. But I couldn't stop these! And here's the conclusion I've come to after a year of experimentation:

With the inherent slop in canti stud brake systems, the hardness of some of the best brake block compounds, and the hardened, machined rims of today, you are going to run across some brake/pad/rim combinations that simply cannot be silenced.

As quickly as possible: I used Avid Shorty 6 cantis, Tektro Vs, Shimano Deore Vs, and Shimano XT Vs. On the pads, I tried both shoe inserts and the full Koolstop blocks, always the "full salmon" version cause that's the compound I like. On forks, I started out with the stock Trek T2000 cromo fork, went to a Woundup Tandem Duo, and ended up, (when I gave up), with a Bontrager Satellite (carbon/aluminum) tandem fork. The hardened, machined rims were Bonti Racelite Tandem.

Two things I tried that did deafen me with silence: Once, I toed the shoes so far in it was ridiculous. No squeal finally, but so little brake block contacting the rim that they stopped worse than the regular blocks. The second silencer was changing front wheels with our Fuji tandem, (Alex Crosstini rims). No squeal there either, but that wasn't the wheel I wanted to run on this bike!

The Bontrager fork I ended up with was for caliper brakes, I slapped an Ultegra on it WITH the Koolstop salmons. It stops, the pads are not toed at all, (flat to rim), it's never squealed once, and I've never looked back.

As sure as I am about my diagnosis, I'm equally as sure someone will post back with some other hardened, machined rim, some other brakeset with salmon pads and report "no problems". Before you do, please note that I said that you are going to run across "some" combinations that simply won't work, not "all".

But I grew tired of looking for that elusive combination that allowed me to keep my Bonti wheels!

Our Cannondale RT2000 used to squeal like a pig...Now, with our daVinci's disc brakes, it's quiet is deafening!