I ride about 100 metres up the road with the brakes on then do short sharp stops on the way back.
How do you do yours?

Go for a ride.

Try to remember the performance will be off for a bit.

Generally remember while going into the first corner too fast.

Exactly what I do, maybe up and down the road 2 or 3 times then that’s it. 😀

About the same as Jam bo.

Dont know. One of the pit crew does it I suppose.

They’re usually just taking the tyre warmers off when I arrive.

I used to lightly sand the surface or put some dirt on the discs. Now I just ride

How do the STW massive bed there new pads in?

I find someone who doesn’t know the difference between ‘there’ and ‘their’ and rub each pad vigorously across their forehead for 5 minutes 😉

Biggest tarmac hill I can find, fast as I can – and hoon the brakes on hard as I can without going arse over tit.

always worked for me 😀

Big road and load of speed, first moments are sketchy as nothing happens then they & otb I go

Slight road downhill (or a steep one if available and long enough), pedal hard and brake repeatedly on one wheel only whilst pedaling, after 4 or 5 hard efforts, swap to the other brake, repeat for 4 or 5 lots of each brake (making it about 25 stops per brake in total).

Used to do it on a steep road past my house, took about 5 minutes to climb it so it was more interesting than doing a turbo session, just ride it bottom to top, sprint down, hard braking, repeat.

Does anyone believe it makes any difference?

I’ve not noticed mine lasting any less since I don’t bother anymore,

Slam them on a one at s time a bit until they start to bite.

thisisnotaspoon – Member
Slight road downhill (or a steep one if available and long enough), pedal hard and brake repeatedly on one wheel only whilst pedaling, after 4 or 5 hard efforts, swap to the other brake, repeat for 4 or 5 lots of each brake (making it about 25 stops per brake in total).

Used to do it on a steep road past my house, took about 5 minutes to climb it so it was more interesting than doing a turbo session, just ride it bottom to top, sprint down, hard braking, repeat.

This is all so unnecessary!

What jam bo says.

1st bit of a downhill or 1st bit of braking and done

we aint pros are we eh.!

Er… just ride the bike? That’s what i do!

Works for me

My street is on an incline, to the top and down again a few times braking hard. Also a few times with brakes on while pedalling down hill. Then go for a ride. It’s not a long road, I’d rather arrive at the trail with more worn in brakes than leave as such.

Ride up the road with the brakes on for 100m then chuck cold water over them.

Ride up the road with the brakes on for 100m then chuck cold water over them.

+1 repeat a few times.

can involve a pool of jelly ,a pole ,alcohol and …..

oh wait you mean brake pads

Thanks to the Grammar Police.(their there whatever) you know what I mean!
Heard of the cold water thing before but what will that achieve?

Nothing

Ah, what a coincidence – I’ve just got back in from bedding in a new pair of pads. I park at the top of a long tarmac climb that’s popular with those peculiar folk wot ride road bikes 😉 Blast down the hill at full tilt, then drag the brakes a bit to get the pads nice & hot and then do a few stoppies. Then brakes off and try and overtake any roadies on the descent 😀 Half an hour in cafe at bottom of the hill gorging coffee & cake, then slog back uphill, getting overtaken by kids & OAP’s on road bikes (bloomin’ freaks 😉 )

Can’t really say whether this improves stopping power or pad life, but the coffee & cake is nice!)

1)

In materials science, quenching is the rapid cooling of a workpiece to obtain certain material properties. It prevents low-temperature processes, such as phase transformations, from occurring by only providing a narrow window of time in which the reaction is both thermodynamically favorable and kinetically accessible. For instance, it can reduce crystallinity and thereby increase toughness of both alloys and plastics (produced through polymerization).

In metallurgy, it is most commonly used to harden steel by introducing martensite, in which case the steel must be rapidly cooled through its eutectoid point, the temperature at which austenite becomes unstable. In steel alloyed with metals such as nickel and manganese, the eutectoid temperature becomes much lower, but the kinetic barriers to phase transformation remain the same. This allows quenching to start at a lower temperature, making the process much easier. High speed steel also has added tungsten, which serves to raise kinetic barriers and give the illusion that the material has been cooled more rapidly than it really has. Even cooling such alloys slowly in air has most of the desired effects of quenching.

Extremely rapid cooling can prevent the formation of all crystal structure, resulting in amorphous metal or “metallic glass”.

Quench hardening

Quench hardening is a mechanical process in which steel and cast iron alloys are strengthened and hardened. These metals consist of ferrous metals and alloys. This is done by heating the material to a certain temperature, depematerial. This produces a harder material by either surface hardening or through-hardening varying on the rate at which the material is cooled. The material is then often tempered to reduce the brittleness that may increase from the quench hardening process. Items that may be quenched include gears, shafts, and wear blocks.

Quenching metals is a progression; the first step is soaking the metal, i.e. heating it to the required temperature. Soaking can be done by air (air furnace), or a bath. The soaking time in air furnaces should be 1 to 2 minutes for each millimeter of cross-section. For a bath the time can range a little higher. The recommended time allotment in salt or lead baths is 0 to 6 minutes. Uneven heating or overheating should be avoided at all cost. Most materials are heated from anywhere to 815 to 900 °C (1,500 to 1,650 °F).

The next item on the progression list is the cooling of the part. Water is one of the most efficient quenching media where maximum hardness is acquired, but there is a small chance that it may cause distortion and tiny cracking. When hardness can be sacrificed, whale, cottonseed and mineral oils are used. These often tend to oxidize and form a sludge, which consequently lowers the efficiency. The quenching velocity (cooling rate) of oil is much less than water. Intermediate rates between water and oil can be obtained with water containing 10-30% UCON from DOW, a substance with an inverse solubility which therefore deposits on the object to slow the rate of cooling.

To minimize distortion, long cylindrical workpieces are quenched vertically; flat workpieces are quenched on edge; and thick sections should enter the bath first. To prevent steam bubbles the bath is agitated.

Before the material is hardened, the microstructure of the material is a pearlite grain structure that is uniform and lamellar. Pearlite is a mixture of ferrite and cementite formed when steel or cast iron are manufactured and cooled at a slow rate. After quench hardening, the microstructure of the material form into martensite as a fine, needle-like grain structure.

Before using this technique it is essential to look up the rate constants for the quenching of the excited states of metal ions.

…or when I asked the same question many years ago

2) TJ told me to do it.

Jeez Harry, all that talk of martensite, eutectoid points and austenite has brought me out in a cold sweat (dreadful memories of writing up my PhD thesis….. 😯 ).

Mind you the following

To minimize distortion, long cylindrical workpieces are quenched vertically; flat workpieces are quenched on edge; and thick sections should enter the bath first. To prevent steam bubbles the bath is agitated.

raised a smile when I remember how myself and a fellow post grad student accidentally(?) dropped a 1300 deg C bar of steel into a cold water tank – all I remember was my mate running off shouting F***IN’ LEG IT! 😆 (all done in the name of important research of course)

Just ride them in crap conditions\weather, wet dirty gritty crud will sort them out in no time. Which conveniently are the most common riding conditions in the UK 😛

20 mph whack on brakes x7. Job’s a good un.

jam bo – Member

Does anyone believe it makes any difference?

Absolutely. Especially in winter, it’s made a big difference to every pad I’ve done a comparison with. Not to mention meaning no fannying around on the first proper ride I take them on.

Only takes a couple of minutes to do it after all.

I’m sold on the idea of bedding in, based on the fact that any pads I use during the summer last half the winter. Any pads that I put in during the winter last about 2 rides……

I do a long training climb, then descend a very steep, twisty, cobbled road which involves very heavy, intermittent braking. Seems to do the trick…

One year, I will bulk buy pads and bed them all in during the dry months…

an initial bed in of 6-7 hard sprints, followed by hard braking and water quenching* – seems to aid bite and longevity a bit

*if it doesn’t sizzle you aren’t trying hard enough

I’ve always understood the only point of the water sizzle was to prove you’d got the disc (and therefore the pads) hot enough. And I’ve assumed that the pads need to get hot to cure the pad matrix. But there are a few logical inconsistencies I can’t get my head round…

Curing most resins takes more than a minute or two. And cooling them with water just when they’ve reached curing temp doesn’t help that. And if they need curing, why doesn’t the pad maker do it in controlled factory conditions?

Quenching the disc might help harden the surface. But why doesn’t the disc maker do it? Why does it need doing again because you have new pads? Doesn’t getting the the disc hot during a ride and it cooling slowly (assumes no rain or puddles, so unlikely) spoil the quench?

So is it just to do with profiling the new pad surface to match the existing disc? And the sizzle is because until you have good contact you can’t get the disc hot enough to sizzle? Or am I just confused?

Just going for a ride is an excellent way to bed in your pads in the dry or an excellent way to fail to bed them in whilst causing tons of avoidable wear, or even completing knackering them, in the wet and mud.

I bed my cars track day pads in, i bed my every day car pads in and i bed my mtb pads in, have done for 20 odd years – some folk seem to need mtb brake pads after every couple of rides, i went through one set of pads this year on my mtb despite running about in mud for most of the year.

Find a steep and long hill, head down and drag the brake till you can smell the pads burning, stop and climb back up allowing them to cool fully, repeat 6 or 7 times till they start to bite, you’ll soon realise when you reach this bite point as the slightest one finger braking will be enough to stop you from any speed or send you over the bars.

Formula R1, floating rotors and Goodridge sintered pads for me, i only use resin pads if it is dry, which rules out every single ride i have had this year.

+1 for riding 100m with a few sharp brakes. Water and sizzle = done. Max 2 mins.

Or you can ride around with rubbish brakes until they sort themselves out.

If you’ve signed up for next years UCI Downhill series there may be some merit in “bedding in” your pads. If not, just ride them. 😀 Top tip: ensure you use the correct size rotors for your brakes!

Put pads in brake, go ride.

Popocatapetl – Member

If you’ve signed up for next years UCI Downhill series there may be some merit in “bedding in” your pads.

What a strange comment.