I have got through about three sets of rear pads in the last weeks and calculated that one set of pads would last about 2500 vertical meters descent. mmm… Potential for an expensive summer! A couple of days ago my rear rotor completly let go of its hold on life during a descent, luckily I managed to stay in the saddle, but essentialy the rear wheel locked and the fragments of the rotor caused havic around the caliper!

Clearly I let the rotor get far too thin, thats my own stupid fault, but I have been trying to work out how this would increase pad wear…any ideas out there?

My only thought at the moment would be heat.

Pic of rotor?

Never seen this before.

OK, here is the photo.

wow. what brand is that?

Brake drag much?

they should last longer than 2500m vertical descent. That’s like one pad per two runs in Morzine.

Move to better wearing pads (sintered), make up for the fact that they dump heat into the oil by sticking some castrol srf in your brakes….this should help stop you from melting your discs and sintered pads work better at high disc temps…downside is you may boil your oil….lol and move to a less XC orientated disc.

I live in the Alps, so need something quite resistant to temperature etc. This configuration is Formula Bianca’s, with Superstar Kevlar and Superstar discs.

I have always had issues, I suspect the Formula Oro pads just don’t have enough meat on them and I need something a bit heavier, but I have never seen this before. At the end of last season I noticed the pad wear rate increasing, probably I should have changed the discs at this point.

Therefore bwaarp, I think you last comment “move to less XC orientated disc” is 50% there, should read “Change to less XC oreintated system”

Get some decent steel rotors with a ground surface, such as formula, and some quality pads like goodridge sintered or ebc red (downhill) and you will be amazed at the difference it makes.

I have been running ebc red pads a few years now, and was amazed at how long they last, because of the increased friction, I am not pulling on the brakes as hard and long as with a cheaper set-up.

How thin is that rotor then?

Okay Selled, here’s the plan. Try some bigger discs, 203mm rotors front and rear, with some sintered pads and some castrol srf fluid.

Sintered pads dump less heat into the rotor, so you won’t melt them as easily. The downside as I said is that they dump heat into the brake fluid, which is where some Castrol SRF or Motul 600 race fluid is useful. These fluids (especially srf) have much higher dry and wet boiling temps than standard dot 4 or dot 5.1.

Whilst sintered are less grabby, they are more resistant to brake fade (aka work better at higher temp).

If you are still having problems, then upgrade to a new formula brake such as the an RO or The One….the bigger calliper should dissapate heat better and the bigger pads shouldn’t wear as quicky…. you could swap the new brakes onto your new rotors!

http://www.pinkbike.com/news/brake-pad-information-2009.html

jeez – that rotor actually looks melted!

Superstar discs

hi,

i’ve used all sorts of pad / rotor size combos. I have noticed that on my DH bike and my XC bike that the kevlar pads cause more rotor wear than any other that I’ve tried. I reccomend the superstar sintered pads.

there is nothing wrong with superstar discs.