Originally Posted by
TimothyH
Someone here recounted their experience that sufficient operating temperatures could not be maintained under normal gravel riding condition for metal pads such that they ran cold and therefor lacked stopping power. His position was that resin pads were preferred. I'm not discounting this at all and have first hand experience with cold track brake pads on a street car - it isn't fun to step on the brake and have nothing.
He's sort of right but not in the way he thinks. Metallic pads have less initial grab than resin, the power curve is flatter at the start of braking. It's better for a lot of quick, sharp braking like in mountain biking as it reduces fork compression and allows smoother position changes. For gravel riding I've never really noticed much difference in pad compound. What I have noticed is quality of the pad material, no-name Chinese pads and TRP pads are atrociously bad. I wore out the stock TRP Spyre pads in less than 30 hours of rain riding and the braking was always poor. Replaced with Shimano B01S and they've got 40 rain hours and 70 dry hours with at least half the thickness left and excellent braking.
I also really like TruckerCo pads - I run those on my gravel racer and mountain bikes. I use both resin and semi-metallic as some were cheaper and I can't tell the difference.
This is good:
https://www.pinkbike.com/news/brake-...tion-2009.html
What kind of rotors are you using? They can make a difference as well.