needs some mud to remove excessive cleanness 🙂

Ditto.

Yeah what they said get down n dirty !!!!!

fill and boil the kettle, pour it over the discs.

leave enough for a cup of tea.

repeat.

I use Isopropyl alchohol on mine, with no issues at all. It evaporates quickly and leaves no residue. In fact, I use a 50:50 mix of IPA and deionised water for cleaning the screen on my PowerBook and Sony Bravia, so it's pretty benign stuff. I've used meths before and it seemed to be fine, but admittedly I did get squealing from time to time, so meths may have something to do with it. I have M4's and M4 Monos, both six years old, and both still using original pads.

IPA is a better degreaser, it could be nothing to do with grease though, are the pads needing chnaged or does the caliper need adjusted?

Why clean them at all unless contaminated - which is what you have now done as meths leaves a residue.

Strong detergant water mix and then sand when dry - and burn / sand the pads.

You need a microscopic layer of melted pad material on the disc for the brake to work properly - cleaning them can remove this.

Putting mud on them is just a poor uncontrolled way of abrading the pad and disc surface.

Way hay! Just had a brain-wave and it worked. Just got my lighter and let the flame heat gently the rotor all round and no more squeal - perfect! I'm guessing that the flame and soot has burnt off any residue and left a carbon deposit 🙂

I've been told you should use white spirit, not meths, due to the residue as you've found 🙂

White spirit, surely its oil based...

You need a microscopic layer of melted pad material on the disc for the brake to work properly - cleaning them can remove this.

explaining why new pads don't work till you brake really hard ?

Putting mud on them is just a poor uncontrolled way of abrading the pad and disc surface.

but does establish their normal condition in this country