I have 4 vintage Modolo brake pads that are not worn down, but seem very hard are they still good? They don’t seem to be rubber. They seem to be more of a composite material.
can I sand the surface down a bit on each and refit them to the bike?
i’m doing a light restoration of a 1978 Francesco Moser

My advice, assuming that they are the pads I am thinking of, is get rid of them. They are too hard and tend to damage the braking surface of the alloy rim. Plus, they do not seem to work well, especially in wet riding conditions. Anyway, that is what I recall. For road worthiness and safety, get new pads and go with that option. I stress the importance of this. I have been part of brakes don't seem to be working right and, by then, it might well be too late.

I do have rubber new style replacements…. But keeping it vintage I thought having all original ones would be better
and it it seems like a different material than modern ones are.
thanks for the reply.

Those pads are sintorized, they worked good but they also wore the the rim brake track down faster than one would normally expect.

KoolStop make a replacement that fits perfectly. Use black if you want it to look original, or salmon if you’ll be riding in the rain. These Mavic brakes are just rebadged Modolo Speedys.

So in your opinion…. Don’t use them?

In this case, the "C&V gods" will not object if you replaced the original "sinterized" brake pads with Kool Stop rubber ones, as the sinterized brake pads were hated by most cyclists from the day they were first issued by Modolo, because of the reasons stated already.......

maybe new tires too ? "keeping it vintage" only gets you so far.

If they hold air

/markp

I put Kool Stop pads on mine,

For the sake of safety I use new brake pads, tires, tubes, and cables, pretty much everybody else on this forum does too for bikes they actually ride. These have a fairly generic appearance, they look about the same as their vintage counterparts and don't significantly alter the look of your bike.

Those are Modolo's "Sinterized" brake pads. I'd replace them. They have a reputation for being very hard on rims (wearing through the sidewall).

Absolutely. They are really tough to get out of the pad shoe though.

I’ll dog pile on what others have said and replace ‘em with KoolStops. I bagged up my sinterized pads for posterity and the KoolStops work fabulously.

Other downside to sinterized modolo pads is that can squeal extremely loud when brakes applied. Probably does not help that the caliper arms have minimal front/back stiffness.

Yup!,..., the Modolos have flexible caliper arms, because Modolo made them so thin in cross section. Especially the models below the Speediies....

Let me join in the hate for Modolo sinterized brake pads. You may not win any style points with kool stop continentals but they work well and easy peasy to mount on your brake calipers.

https://www.modernbike.com/product-2...UaAhnuEALw_wcB

and I will join the chorus, too: I replaced every Modolo pad wiith KoolStops and makes all the difference in performance (I only use Pro model calipers cause next to those sinterized pads the next most-hated thing on my Modolo list is ANY of the cheaper model calipers...or maybe their stems that crack!)

But if there are any lovers of Modolo sinterized pads out there: hit me up for a set of NOS gems you can get for the cost of shipping!

What is interesting is, Modolo invested a lot towards their sinterized brake pads. It was pretty much on all their brakesets, except for their cheapest models. Plus they proudly printed "World Champion 1983" on them, for everyone to see....
I was surprised that they carried those brake pads for so many years and never really gave up on them, despite the bad feedback they were getting from cyclists, all that time.... There's still a lot of them selling for NOS at eBay. I wouldn't be surprised if there's still a whole warehouse worth of them, still around, somewhere in Italy....