Originally Posted by
Jay Olson
Maybe at some point in the past this was true, but I don't think this is true with current versions of these pads.
There was a review of carbon climbing wheels in an issue of VeloNews last year (vol 37, no. 14), that also compared braking performance using the stock pads and using SwissStop yellow pads where appropriate. The stock Zipp pads on Zipp 202s were considered borderline dangerous, whereas the braking performance with SwissStop yellow pads was considered among the best.
I have a set of the Zipp pads for my 202s, and I was surprised to find how much had melted away on a couple of rides in the local hills. I have a set of SwissStop yellow pads on order, which I intend to install as soon as they arrive.
This was a bit of a misconception borne out of a lack of familiarity with the design of our pads. Matt was concerned with the pad shedding hot material, as evidenced by the small tail of material on the pad depicted in the article photo. However, the intent is that the pad sheds hot material instead of melting, this little tail results. He assumed this was related to pad melting and believed the pads showed exceedingly high wear relative to the other pads, but if you refer again to the pictures in the article, there is considerable wear remaining in the pads. The pad is considered worn out when the grooves in the surface of the pad are no longer visible; these grooves are located at the midline of the Zipp/Kool Stop logo on the pad. In the pictures in the article you can see that the wear has not even reached the top of this text, which means that they have at least 1.5 mm of additional wear remaining. Considering that the pads have 1.75 mm of usable thickness when new, the pads he determined were completely worn out in fact were at most 15-20% used. If you talk with Matt, he'll be the first to tell you that he thought they functioned well but was unnerved by his perception of excessive wear.
Velonews was supposed to print this information as well as a response to some of the issues we have with their aerodynamic testing methodology in the same article (single run data, unrealistic effective yaw angle, etc.), but I can't say I've had a chance to verify that they ever did so.