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Caring for your
Hydraulic Disc Brakes.
OK, you have hydraulic disc brakes on your bike…well done! Here’s how to keep them noise-free and working correctly.
If your bike is new or we serviced your brakes with new pads or discs then we have already bedded them in on our Smart Bedding Machine.
Your brakes will perform better and be noise-free.
However…
Your brakes can be contaminated or glazed as you ride and lose performance. If this happens, you will need to re-condition them with a ‘bed-in’ process. Check out this video guide from SRAM:
You can improve on this process using a hill, gravity is your friend!
We say ABC stands for Always Be Conditioning. As you ride your brakes will get dirty and they’ll get wet, so brake conditioning is part of riding. If you use every downhill to condition your brakes, you’ll use pads a little faster but your brakes will be more effective and they’ll stay noise-free.
There are two rules with disc brakes on bikes, the first is this: Treat them mean to keep them keen.
A soft brake action will glaze your brakes and they’ll stop working…plus they’ll start to squeal.
Second rule of happy brakes is DO NOT SPRAY ANYTHING ON YOUR BIKE. Your brakes don’t get hot enough to burn off contaminants, so anything sprayed from an aerosol can will end up in your brakes.
You’ll find lots of aerosol products that claim to be safe to use on bikes and we think it’s BS. We see two or three bikes a week in our workshop for brake replacement and it’s always because of something that came out of an aerosol can.
WD-40 is not your friend. Don’t spray it on your bike!
Top tips:
Follow these guides for great brakes.
- Lubricate your chain with a dripper bottle. Spray lubes get in your brakes.
- Fresh pads are more efficient and more powerful. Wearing your pads down to the last .1mm might save you $2 but your brakes will be rubbish.
- Metal pads work great but they’re noisy and wear quickly. They’re also harder on discs.
- Resin pads are quiet and strong enough for most riders.
- Worn discs will cause poor brake performance and cause soft levers, even with new pads. New discs are cheap and they restore new brake performance.
Bad news:
We hate to be the bearer of bad news.
- If your brakes are squealing and you’ve conditioned them as per the video above then it’s new brake time. We’ve tried everything to recover squealing brakes and there’s nothing that works permanently – new discs and pads solve the problem every time.
- Full brake replacement costs around $120 for most bikes. If we need to do a fluid change and bleed it adds about $70. If all of your internal seals are working ok, this job will restore new brake performance – not bad for under $200!
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