I have a set of Ksyrium Elites - After descending long hills, i quite frequently hear a scraping sound coming from the brakepads. If i’m feeling patient, I stop, pull the wheels off and pluck yet another tiny piece of aluminum braking surface out of the brakepad. When i look closely at the surface of the rim, there’s tiny little flakes (hard to describe) that are standing out from the brake surface. I took it to my local wrench who just suggested i keep plucking the bits of aluminum from the pad.
Well, this NEVER happened with my Open Pros, and frankly, i’m not sure i’ve heard of anyone else who has to pluck tiny pieces of braking surface from their brake pads.
I’ve got (allegedly) the correct type of dura ace brake pad for this rim - I’m gonna go for a 2nd opinion at another shop, but i’m wondering:
a) were they the wrong pads and they’re chewing up my rims,
when I was using 9s shimaNO brakes with the stock pads, I had the same thing happen. campy pads don’t do that, kool-stops don’t either. I heard shimano upgraded the pad compound for 10s.
That’s why i’m reasonably certain that i have the right pads - because i’d initially bought the ones for ceramic rims, took them back and was quite careful to get the correct ones.
As for the electric current running through my wheels, umm, well, let me look into that. I’ll get back to you…
I don’t like to say negative things about any product on a public forum but I will mention i have not had any of these problems with Easton wheels.
We’ve had a long running spat of issues with some famous maker hub shells that have a seam in the middle. We’ve also had enough rim durability issues with the same brand of rim that we are now pleased to recommend something else, such as Easton/Velomax, as a better replacement for customers who may be open to suggestions.
You had just better hope that those Easton/Velomax wheels do not break a spoke off in the hub where they are threaded in. At that point the wheel is toast and the best they will offer you is a factory second wheel at a hundred off of retail.
Yes it happened to my wife’s rear velomax, yes I am bitter about it given that it was just out of warranty and our LBS found Easton/Velomax to be regular arseholes to deal with.
Not big with Mavic either, I dont like their freehub design much. Get a set of nice handbuilt for less money more performance and you can actually repair them.
I had the exact same problem with some Mavic Cosmic Elites - changing the pads to a harder compound helped a bit - but that awful sound never went away completely. I think the first problem is that road grit would get stuck between the pad and the rim and chew it up a bit - then the bits of braking surface got stuck in the pad, making the rim even worse - and picking up more stuff again. A quick fix was to pick out the bits of aluminum from the pads and sand the pads down a bit. A not so quick fix is to clean the rim with Emery paper or a deburring stone. Kiss your ceramic coating goodbye - it’s not working anyways.
Ended up toasting the rear wheel last year and buying a new set - problem solved.
I had that problem a while back on a sey of Vector pros with the standard dura ace pads, it came on while heavy braking down Baldy.
I used a fine scotch brite pad that was made to attach to my handheld grinder, put the hub on the ground and put the pad to the rim and let the rim spin with the grinder, not up to full speed mind you, after about 15 seconds most or the crap on the rim was gone. A second go at it made it just like new, replaced the brake pads and did not have the problem again. And no, the pad does not take off much material, just the stuff that is not really attached. The high speed of the grinder makes for a very even cleaning of the surface. I have not done it on rims that are groved on the brake surface, but the elites that I had did not have those groves, also I have only found one pad soft enough to not damage the rim from continental abrasives.
I fixed up a set of cosmics for the owner of my LBS who had issues like that as well, I do not believe the problem will ever get better withuot completely cleaning the rim surface since whatever comes off on the pad will screw up other portions of the rim that may have been ok.