A little while back when I was soliciting advice on pads and levers to improve my braking (went with Koolstop Salmons at pretty much everyone's advice), I seem to remember someone saying that the salmon Koolstops don't work well with steel rims.

So this morning while waiting for my water to boil, I took a refrigerator magnet to various parts of my bike. The magnet was lightly attracted to the rim, but nowhere near as strongly as to the spokes, fenders, or frame. I mean you could feel a light pull but it wasn't strong enough to keep it stuck to the rim on the top of the wheel (the magnet is heavy, but it stuck to the spoke without problem).

Does this mean the rim is just a not-so-magnetic steel (if there's such a thing), or it's an alloy with some steel in it, or some third possibility I can't think of right now? If it helps at all, the rim said it was an ARAYA HE VP-20.

On a related topic, the braking surface has lots of black streaks on it from the hardened old shimano pads I just took off the bike. Should I try to clean that off somehow? How?

On an unrelated note, I have two sets of lightly used bar tape. I'd thought of putting them both back on the bike to give some extra padding (so double taping it). If I do that, do I wrap them both the same direction or do clockwise-then-counterclockwise for one side and the opposite for the other? Or should I just single tape it.

thanks.