Brake upgrade

[John the Monkey]

Sorry to hijack the thread. I have un-branded dual pivot brakes on my Trek Pilot, and even with new pads they're spongy. Would an upgrade from no name alloy to something like the 105 produce a noticable difffernce in youse guys opinion?

When you say spongy, do you mean lever feel?

That may not be a bad sign per se - Sheldon;

"With automobile brakes, a nice "hard" pedal feel is a sign that the brakes are in good condition. A soft, "spongy" feel at the brake pedal is a sign of trouble, perhaps air in the hydraulic lines. This is not the case with bicycle brakes. A hard, crisp feel to the brakes on a bicycle may be a sign that the brakes don't have much mechanical advantage. You squeeze them until the brake shoes hit the rim, then they stop. Brakes with a high mechanical advantage will feel "spongy" by comparison, because the large amount of force they deliver to the brake shoes will squash the shoes against the rim, deforming them temporarily under pressure. You can feel this deformation in your fingers. The brakes with the rock-hard feel may seem nice on the work stand or the showroom floor, but when it comes to making the bike actually stop, the spongy set-up will do the job better, with less finger pressure and greater margin for safety in wet conditions."

 

[2Loose]

Anything with Koolstops in should already stop fine, but cable outers can make a big difference - some people suggest using gear cable outers, or goodridge etc. because the outer is not compressible, unlike a normal brake outer, but this will completely change the 'feel' at the lever.

 

[jowwy]

Ok - Having rode my road bike again over the weekend, i do think a caliper upgrade is needed.

The Raleigh only came with single pivot calipers and the seem pretty weak to me - so i'm looking at upgrading to dual pivet campagnilo calipers at a price range of about £40 - well worth the upgrade at that price and enhancing my stopping power.

There are some pretty darn steep hills were i ride and going down them can be pretty scarey.

 

[tyred]

I would still look at other things first. Calipers of the same reach will have the same mechanical advantage. Check out your cables in particular.

I have ancient Weinmann single pivots on a number of my road bikes and they work well with decent pads imo.