How to fix squealing cantilever brakes with Koolstop pads
 

Hi - I recently switched over to Koolstop salmon pads for my cantilever brakes. This is on a touring style bicycle that I use for my daily commute. They squeal horrendously. And the front has a different frequency of squeal than the back, which is fun. I think the general advice is that you want the part of the brake pad that is closer to the front of the bicycle to hit the rim first - but these pads are strange - they have little flexible parts in the back that stick out. So I feel like I'm almost guaranteed to always have the back hit first.

I've included a picture to show what I mean. Note that these are cartridge style brakes. I'm looking down on them from above, and this is my rear wheel. On the right you can see that the pad sticks out a bit more than the rest of the pad - ie that it is not flat. I do not believe it is possible to have that part in front, as, IIRC, there was only one slot for the pin to go into in the pad (the pin that keeps the pad from sliding out of the cartridge).

Should I just adjust the brakes to try to get the front of them (the part closer to the front of the bike) to hit earlier? Should it hit even earlier than the springy part in the back? These are strange pads... Not used to them!

I also had a very loud squeal from my KoolStops with Cantilever brakes. In my case, the squeal went away after about 300 miles of riding. My theory is that the new pads and new rims needed bedding and using the bike is the best way to achieve this.


http://i289.photobucket.com/albums/l...ps74a61db2.jpg

Yes, you should. You can sand down that "plow" bit on the back if you need to. In fact, you can lightly sand the entire pad a bit which sometimes helps.

Sometimes, as the commenter above states, you need to break in both the rim and the pads, and it may just take a while.

'eagle claw' tail* should get the toe in adjustment OK , if you are using V Brake paired washers
convex and concave faces , 4 pieces, on either side of the brake caliper mount
so squeezing the brake against the rim, 1st, then snugging the fixing nut on the brake pad stud

holds the pad in that angle , not forcing it square to the brake , which is coming down tail first.. leading end.

'toe in' is actually coming down pad trailing edge first, as rim at the top is rotating forward.

* its there to clear off the crud from the rim ahead of the actual braking surface.

+1

The set I put on my rain bike screamed like a banshee for the first hundred miles. Now at 200 mi they've quieted down quite a bit. One post-rain ride I did seemed to make the most difference. My theory is that ride picked up a lot more sand from the road which helped the bedding process.

I just put KoolStop dual compound (black/salmon) on my tandem. Before I mounted them I scuffed the shininess off of the braking surface with some 320 grit sandpaper and they have not squealed and bedded in right away. I think KoolStop is using some sort of mold release agent on their pads and that causes squealing on new pads. On my CX bike with KoolStop cross pads, I had to set toe in since they don't have the little scraper piece like the V-brake parts. The easiest way to this is to loosen the pad bolt, slip a business card under the rearmost "bump" in the braking surface, apply the brake and re-tighten the pad bolt.