Any sure fire way of decontaminating brake pads?

Or should I just ditch em?

Cheers all…

P

Pop them in the dishwasher – works a treat!

Alternatvely clean them up with some brake cleaner, let that evaporate and cook them in the oven for about 1/2 hour.

Obviously depends on how tolerant your partner/flatmate/parents/etc are of you putting bike bits in kitchen appliances.

Supposedly you can bake em off in the oven, I’ve always just gone with sanding down the top surface. I assumes it depends on how much oil they got on them…

I burn it off in a flame – success is variable

soak them in IPA overnight job done

Big hill, get ’em nice and hot, back to normal in no time.

Stuck mine in the oven for an hour and they came out like new.

Supposedly this can break down the structure of the pads and they can subsequently crumble to bits. Hasn’t happened to me, but I’m guessing it might depend on what pads you are running in the first place?

muddy wet puddles usually do the trick, or pop them on a hot hob for few seconds followed by a once over with a clean abrasive.

Right- I now have a very smelly kitchen…

Ooops.

I cleaned mine with surgical spirits…..now they don’t work very well 😳

180c for 20mins in the oven works for me.

cleaned mine with surgical spirits…..now they don’t work very well

I used to work in a lab where we did some testing on various sources of ‘ethanol’. Surgical/hospital alcohol was the cleanest from the perspective of only having known stuff in it (about 95% ethanol, 5% water), but meths from the chemist was by far the cheepest and purest (usualy 99.5%+but the remainder was everything from undisolved solids, salts, hydrocarbons).

As for the OP, if a long ride down a hill doesn’t solve the problem (the surface will get to 600degC+ easily doing that), then a gas hob isn’t going to be any better, and an oven at 180degC (with the fan blowing evaporated oily crap over it for half an hour). Then just buy some cheep new pads.

Depends how bad they are but with the price of pads these days I just bin ’em if they’re more than a little off. Otherwise, rub down with scotchbrite pad, nuke with brake cleaner/isopropyl alcohol, rub on 800-grint wet and dty, nuke again with cleaner. If the surface isn’t good and flat/smooth I’ll give them a tickle with a flat file too. Won’t fix a soaked pad but does sort out surface contamination like you get from mild oversprays and oily mud.

Heating them with a flame is only part of the solution. It doesnt remove the contaminant.
My way is to heat up with plumbers tourch then drop into cement dust which absorbes the oil. (Been told talc powder works as well but not tried it).
Works every time.

I burn them with a blowtorch / gas hob until they stop smoking, then dunk them in a cup of water (mainly to cool them, although the water gets a slick on it suggesting it might be doing something useful).

Most important thing is not to forget about the rotor – you need to clean that properly too otherwise you’ll just recontaminate the pads as soon as you stick them back in. I use alcohol or citrus degreaser stuff.

I used to work in a lab where we did some testing on various sources of ‘ethanol‘. Surgical/hospital alcohol was the cleanest from the perspective of only having known stuff in it (about 95% ethanol, 5% water), but meths from the chemist was by far the cheepest and purest (usualy 99.5%+but the remainder was everything from undisolved solids, salts, hydrocarbons).

You seem to have switched from ethanol to methanol?

Heating them with a flame is only part of the solution. It doesnt remove the contaminant.

Assuming the contaminant is a hydrocarbon or alkane then it will remove the contaminant, it’ll oxidise it to Carbon dioxide and water.

Chemistry aside, what are they contaminated with? If you are using shimano brakes then it’s probably mineral oil which is a bugger to get off and is probably coming from leaky piston seals anyway so just buy new brakes.

Personally if you know the contamination is a one off then I would just ditch them.