Can anyone recommend a good, all-weather pad?

Underscore

Morning all.

Well, last night I rode home through the worst weather that I have ever cycled in. The lay-by on the A-road that I ride along was full of cars that had decided to pull over and let the rain pass rather than risk driving in it! Anyway, it taught me three things:

* Skin real is an excellent water-resistant, breathable membrane * Completely slick tyres really are fine where there is surface water - even a few inches of surface water! * My new rear brake blocks are cr@p in the wet

I put some Kool-stop dual compound pads on a 5-6 weeks ago and, while they are superb in the dry, they a terrible in the wet - they hardly slow you down at all right up to the point where they lock your rear wheel. After a wet ride the other day, I even cleaned the braking surfaces - which didn't help at all!

Anyway, my front pads are nearing replacement time, and the thought of having similar wet weather braking on the front is the stuff of nightmares. So, can anyone recommend some threaded V-brake pads that offer good all-weather performance?

TIA,

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il_principe

SwissStop Green http://www.swissstop.ch/Road.aspx

victor ludorum

Over the past couple of years, I've used Campag's own brake shoes, Swiss Stop Green and Kool Stop Dual Compound. The only difference I noticed was that the Swiss Stops were markedly more expensive than the Kool Stops, although I thought both were superior to the Campag pads.

I started on Campags, went on to Kool Stops then Swiss Stops and went back to Kool Stops, because I couldn't see a performance benefit to justify the extra outlay.

Don't forget, a significant factor in rim-brake performance is how dirty your rims are. If you're out riding in the rain, the accumulated brake dust sludgifies (here comes the science part...) and lubricates the contact with the brake pads. It can also polish the contact surface of the shoes to glass-like smoothness, which dramatically softens the braking effect until you lock the wheels. I don't know of any rim brakes that that doesn't happen to.

If you go out in the wet, try and make sure you give your rims a good clean before and afterwards. A little white spirit works wonders. (Then you can use it to clean the rims... )
It doesn't hurt to scuff up your brake pads a little either - nothing drastic, a thumbnail or something will do. Sometimes it makes the brakes squeal for the first few applications in a ride, but it does help.

Underscore

victor ludorum wrote:

If you go out in the wet, try and make sure you give your rims a good clean before and afterwards. A little white spirit works wonders. (Then you can use it to clean the rims... )

Thanks. I'll give that a try. I did give them a clean the other day but not with anything like white spirit. Bizarrely though, the previous no-name cheapy pads were fine in the wet...

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Surf-Matt

Disk brakes are the only way...