Sorry for the delayed reply. I'm going to try some mountain koolstops on the front and see what happens. As far as my bike, it's a Motobecane Vent Noir with crappy tektro calipers. My guess is these brakes generally suck, but I lack the experience to say for sure. Experimenting with new pads is much less money right now than 105 calipers, so I'll try that first.