So I wondered what the softest compound brake pad was?

I have a set of hard anodized Mavic rims, and I'd like to minimise the wear from the pads. I realise it will inevitably wear down, and once it does you get better brake performance, but i'd like to prolong their perfectness for as long as I can.

I've read Koolstop Salmons are good for anodized rims, but wondered if anyone knew any better?

Any ideas would be much appreciated!

terig, The softest pads I had were some green Cane Creek items.

Brad

The pads don't wear the rim. Dirt and grit trapped by the pads is what wears the rim. To this end, soft pads may be worse at trapping stuff that will wear the rim.

Good point, Looigi.

If you want to preserve your rims, don't ride them in the wet, and clean your pads often (cartridge-style ones are great for this).

Remove those two factors as much as practical and your rims should last a very long time.

I wouldn't expect more than a couple thousand km before the anodising started to look a bit thin at the nipples, though...

I found the braking improved markedly after scouring through the CD anodizing, on my Mavic EX 721 rims.

Having Magura HS 33 Hydraulic Rim Brakes , a couple winter wet down hills with their relatively Abrasive
Green pads was enough..

then I went back to using the pads they got Kool Stop to make for them ..

HS pad holders are a literal Snap to swap out, from the end if the slave cylinders.


Exercise bikes use Felt pads to increase the drag, those would win the softest criteria.

did you read the rest of the post? Looigi's point was that most of the wear on the rim is not a function of pad hardness/softness, but rather a function of grit that gets caught in pads (esp when riding in wet weather). Perhaps his point was a bit overstated, but basically he's correct.
What are you trying to add to this discussion?

Thanks for the input, really helpful.

Frankly i'm not too worried about performance, just the aesthetics! The bikes a track bike, with one front brake so it'll end up looking a bit silly if one rim is rubbed and the other not so much.

I have found, since new pads went on, that the wearing has got much worse (a marked increase in two weeks) hence wondering what might be a bit better. I've been keeping the pads clean though! In an attempt to reduce any wear.

I'm using hard anodized Mavic Open 4CD rims that looked very little used when I installed them on my recent Miyata rebuild (they came from some donated wheels) with Kool Stop salmon pads, and I'm impressed that the rims continue to look almost new after almost 1000 miles of my use, but I'm fastidious about cleaning the rims and pads after a wet ride. OTOH, I wonder if they're contributing to a much harder time eliminating brake squeal.

The pads are in Kool Stop holders on RX-100 medium reach calipers, and I've definitely got them toed in.

I tried lightly sanding the rims with 320 grit paper and removed essentially no material, so I wonder how long it will take to wear through the anodizing.

to the OP: are you sure the rims are hard-anodized, vs. color (cosmetic) anodizing? hard-anodizing takes a long time to wear through, whereas THE ARS is talking about cosmetic anodizing (think those cool-colored rims on urban fixies) that is not durable. It sounds like you are talking about cosmetic anodizing.
Here is a picture of a hard-anodized Mavic rim. The anodizing will wear down over time, but not quickly as you describe. The second picture is of a fixie with cosmetic-anodized rims and a front brake that wears through the anodizing quickly.


If you really want your front rim to match the back rim, you probably need to retrofit your bike to a disc brake as THE ARS says.

On the what-wears-the-rim question: Of course friction stops a bike. But all friction does equally wear on a metal surface. Friction from rubber that is softer than the metal doesn't do much to the metal (although it does wear down the rubber). Whereas friction from grit that gets embedded into brake pads is like sandpaper and wears down the rim material itself.

Some grit will always get into brake pads but this is dramatically accelerated in wet weather. If we lived in a dust-free environment, pads would minimally wear a rim because the rubber is softer than rim.
Anyway, Looigi's original point holds that softer pads won't help stop wearing on your rim, since grit will get into those pads.

[MENTION=340794]Dfrost[/MENTION] - Mavic Open 4 CD rims are ceramic hard-anodized, which makes a harder surface than normal hard-anodized rims like the MA40. These too will eventually wear through if ridden enough, but it will take longer. The Open 4 CD rims are partly targeted toward people who ride in wet weather, so they don't need to worry too much about wearing out their rims.

Thanks Tallrider, I've got a set of gel 280s, which I believe are hard-anodised, but not ceramic, although I could be wrong.

I think I'll have a go with the Salmon Koolstops, i'm sure they'll be softer than the generic ones on their at the moment...

Ah, nice! those are some pretty rims. But soft pads or no, you'll probably still wear down the brake track over time. Here is my MA40 rim after 7,000 miles. It's fine (and the brake surface is a bit more responsive to being grabbed by the pads) but it does eventually wear through. (Note that I wasn't careful with checking or cleaning my brake pads at the time, although it was on a distance road bike so I wasn't braking a ton as I would have on a commuter.)


I suppose another option, if you want symmetry between front and rear brake tracks, is to hook up a rear brake. Although this drops the simplicity coefficient of the bike just a bit.

Ah BUT, some anodizing processes result in a Harder surface than Others..

Ala Orwell's Animal Farm.. "All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others",


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_Farm

BTW,... not if they are polished or just painted.

Actually the Anodizing is like a bee's honeycomb , its the holes that carry the Dye Color...
that a smooth surface wont.

we are talking microscopic imaging to see the structure..

The difference between anodizing and hard anodizing is the resulting film thickness. A hard anodied pard can have an anodied layed up to 200x as thick as a regular anodized part. The hardness of aluminim ozide doesn't change. The wear charactistics of something 200x as thick does.

https://www.anodizing.org/Reference/reference_guide.html