Halfway down a descent in Grizedale yesterday my brakes started to feel funny and make a horrible noise. Carried on to the bottom and checked it and the pad had completely worn away on one side on the back. Didn’t use the back brake again.

Just replaced the pads and it seems to work ok but makes the same kind of horrible sound it did before. The side of the disk rotor where the pad had completely gone is all rough and scratched up. Is it just gonna mangle the new pads really quickly? New rotors are pretty bloody expensive – its a 180mm Avid G2 Clean Sweep rotor.

Hard to tell without seeing but usually I’d say unless you have radial damage to the surface there’s not much need to replace the rotor. Might take a few extra miles to bed in a new pad if there’s grooves. Of course I cant tell if you’ve properly damaged the rotor in an unsafe way so hard to tell.

I did this a few times, didn’t seem to cause a problem.

OK cheers, will just keep an eye on it then.

You can fit other manufacturer’s rotors provided the surface that contacts the pad is the right width. Woolly Hat Shop do some cheap alternatives.

I scored some magura discs on a peaks ride once. They were really quite bad. One of my collegues had an ‘oil stone’ and lathe at home. He took the discs with him and next day they were like brand new. He said it took him 5mins to do.

Might be worth asking anyone with a lather to do you a favour.

Otherwise cheap alternative discs can be had elsewhere.

And if it was only one side which wore through you need to make sure your caliper is aligned properly and that you havent got a lazy piston. Pads should wear evenly.

Thanks Spongebob.

There was a tiny bit left on the other side.

Hmmm, the Shimano pads I have have aluminium backplates, which won’t eat the disk… though of course quite soon you’d start eating away the piston 🙁

get a decent speed power drill and a sandpaper ‘flap wheel’ (it’s like a grinding wheel but uses sandpaper instead of grinding compound). Just sand/polish the rotor down until it is smooth and shiny again.

A mate wore the pads out on with his Avid Codes and ended up with little bits of the backing plate embeded in the rotor. I sorted it out with the sanding wheel and the drill in about 15 min.

If your local to Sheffield I may be able to help you out.