We think our manufacturing partners have figured out rim braking. We have opened new molds on all our 650 and 700 wheels and our wheels will stop much better than most.
I’m not an expert on brake pads and brake track resin so I have been studying the topic and asking a lot of questions. I have decided to trust who I think are the most knowledgeable persons in those businesses.
I had given aluminum serious consideration. If you don’t mind silver brake surfaces it’s not hard – its heavy but not hard to get reasonable braking. If you are concerned about appearance its more difficult. We are concerned about both.
I spent hours preparing with our QC team in Taiwan and then hours discussing this topic with our manufacturers on this last trip - braking, brake pads, various surface etc. I had a very open and direct conversation with the largest pad company and the best brake manufacturing company in Taiwan. Both make disk and rim brakes and pads for every category in our industry.
To give you an idea of the expertise – the pad company manufactures 100,000 pads per day. They have 70 different compounds for the top manufacturers/private labelers and 10 standard compounds for re-sellers. The 60 are compounds developed with wheel manufacturers/private label marketers to fine tune performance (vibration, stopping power etc.) Every possible pad type, color, compound variation, tread pattern etc. has been tried and it comes down to heat.
I asked about black aluminum surfaces – there is a very costly process where very cold anodization process is used to hold color better and also create small surface irregularities to help with stopping power. Another technique is to add micro metal particles to brake surface resin to get more grab on carbon surfaces. But the bottom line was heat tolerance – eventually there is carbon to take into consideration.
The more Kevlar and Super Rubber you can add to the pad - the harder the pad and the better it will stop. Until it burns up the rim. You can get a carbon clinchers to stop equally in dry and within 1-2% in wet if the brake surface can take the heat. Not just the rim surface heat but inside where it’s +50 degrees hotter.
There is plenty of leverage to get the required force to stop – the issue is heat.
This is why good manufacturers say to use their pad. It’s been tested and fine-tuned to their wheels. If you use a high heat pads with a lower temp brake resin – you can make the wheel fail. If you use low heat resin and soft compounds you get another result. This is why marketing tests are easy to manipulate.
Materials are getting better and resins are catching up with pad compounds. If you develop a super high heat resin and super high heat pad your wheel will stop really good. This has not been easy but developments are being made. We decided to go in that direction.
Dan Kennison
facebook: @triPremierBike
http://www.PremierBike.com http://www.PositionOneSports.com