i bought myself a set of these Zipp Carbon/Carbon brake blocks because i had read many good things about them. i read about the higher melting temperature, the fact that they don't rub off onto the rim, they instead turn to powder over their wear, that they don't have any abrasive materials in them to ensure less rim wear, and that they have a much better stopping power than the cork pads used for carbon rims.

so i'd heard more than one suggestion, here and elsewhere, that using a carbon pad on a non-machined powder-coated rim would work fine, so i thought if i was going to go with it, these would work even better. i strap them in, take off down the street, and hit the brake. what do i get? black **** scraped all over my rims. now before i go and try to get rid of them is there anyone who's tried these on powdercoating with any success? and before i spend any money on some cork pads, does anyone actually have any EXPERIENCE with successfully using them (without wearing down the coating), not just hearsay. thanks

not me, but i'll be interested to find out if cork works

Rim brakes even wear chrome plated rims. What you are looking for is not possible. All it takes is one tiny speck of grit between the pad and rim and the powder coat will get scratched. Then the scratches just get filled with pad material and other muck.

Indeed. My advice to you, venerable Baltimore Brother, would be to get a set of machined rims. Powder-coated rims don't shed aluminum like machined ones do, but as aforementioned by somebody else, if anything works its way under the brake pads (which something irrefutably will, if you actually ride the road,) it will not only damage the powder coat, but, over time, compromise the structural integrity of the rim itself, especially if the "brake surface" is a non-flat shape.

As for the cork pads, do yourself a favor and don't. They are designed for carbon rims and carbon rims only. I can't give you any personal experience, but I don't think anybody could, because they really do not work with aluminum and are recommended by a big nobody. On a tangential note, carbon rims on the road are the stoop-ed.

How would these pads far on a Mavic Open Pro CD coated rim? The ones that go for $100 a pop.

Well, i'm not sure if this constitutes as having actual experience with this certain subject, but a friend of mine in Ashland let me ride around his bike for awhile and he had Koolite Tectronic pads on his non-machined rim (Deep V to be exact). The rim looked super ugly, but they seemed to stop pretty good.

He's had the brake on there for around 8 months.

Cork pads wouldn't last more then a week with ceramic rims. If they make pads specifically designed to work with your braking surface get them. If they don't just get whatever you want and write off your pretty coloring as lost for the sake of safety.

(what you most likely want)

Understanding aesthetics, just buy a set of non-machined rims and a matching machined front. This way you can ride the proper wheel for braking and know that you have a "pretty version" at home that you can throw on when you need a dose of bike porn.*

*Biek pr0n is teh jam. (Did I do that correctly?)

In total agreeance...except for the last statement, which I can refute with the Bontrager XXX Lite wheels, the strongest rim/wheelset in the line-up and utterly bombproof for racing and training alike; I doubt they've been put through a bunny hop test however. Where some Zipp rims and wheels are flex city and wouldn't be fit for anything but racing, some are actually engineered with miles of training in mind.

And what happens when one gets tacoed(do carbon rims even taco or just snap?) botrager doesn't offer any sort of crash replacement so what do you do? What about structural damage from getting run into a curb or something. Do you have to replace them even if they aren't visibly cracked?


Riding any $2500+ wheelset around is indeed stoop-ed for almost everyone. The type of rich you'd have to be for the performance benefit to be worth the cost of $1200 or more to replace a wheel after a crash is beyond most of our comprehension.

I have these on my colnago (road bike). They're beyond sweet. Perfect for a "non-machined" look that you can still run brakes on, nice profile, strong.
They don't come in pink or gold, and they are a hundred dollars.

Bontrager's carbon rims aren't really the bee's knees that they say they are, especially for practical riding. Zipp's no better at all. If you actually did put those Bontrager XXX Lite's through a bunny-hop test, how do you think they'd fare? Poorly. And if you tacked on a poor landing? Carbon rims don't taco. No indeed. They break.

Furthermore, if any part of the rim or hub got a scratch on it that went past the clear coat, it would, as is the case with just about any other carbon fiber product out there, compromise the entire product's structural integrity. Why do you think Bontrager sells 'em with wheel bags?

I'll admit openly that I'm not a fan of Bontrager. In my personal opinion, which I don't hope to foist on anyone, they tend to use corporate clout and "technological advancements" to compensate for a lack of real workmanship. But they put out product, and whatever, I've got no problem with anybody riding their stuff on a velodrome track, or on the pristine roads of the Tour, or anything like that. But if you're riding on the road-road, carbon rims are a baaaaad idea. Plus you have to sell your firstborn to get them. But this thread is about brakes, so I'll hijack no more.

The CD's aren't ceramic, they are hard anodized. Regular pads should work fine, and the finish shouldn't wear off. Unfotunately, if you want a specific look, they only come in a weird brownish black color that looks a little odd in combination with some other colors.

The finish wears off ...

Mine are the old S.U.P. Open's with thousands of miles on them. Finish intact.

if i were using a brake on a powdercoated rim i would be concerned that the moment it got wet it would just simply cease to function as a braking surface. braking surfaces are machined for a reason. personally speaking, the only non-machined rims i like are old school track tubie rims with too little profile for a brake surface, and no reason on god's earth to possess one.

I also don't want to hijack, but none of us at the shop can flex the XXX Lite rim that we have sitting around. A spoke pulled through one of the holes in shipping and compared to the Aerohead we let people flex next to it, it's AMAZING to see the difference in elasticity.

*shrug* I've got a set at the shop - finish is 50% off. Same deal.

So even though you can't flex it it appears to have serious durability issues.

Q.E.D.