What type of pads for my disc’s is best for down hill Alpine riding

Sintered with big rotors (at least in front).

organic.
not sintered as they are liable to overheat and cause brake fade on long down hills.

ceramic

Sintered

[quote]organic.[/quote]

ceramic

🙂

What about a combination of sintered/organic/ceramic pads in each caliper?

I used Kevlar to great effect last time I was in the alps.

Organic in the dry, sintered in the wet.

Sintered cope with heat better but can transfer more heat to the rest of the braking system leading to boiled fluid. Best wear characteristics.

Organic give more power and do not transmit heat to the rest of the system so much but can overheat themselves ( debatable / contentious) Higher wear rate.

so it depends on when and how your system will hit its limits. 🙂

Sintered are for wet riding, they’ll get trashed in the dry pretty quickly.

The choice between organic and kevlar is yours.

madhouse – Member

Sintered are for wet riding, they’ll get trashed in the dry pretty quickly.

Not true – I use sintered in all my bikes all year round and get great life from them

Brake compounds

For me, sintered in Alps area will last for something like 20-30 k of vertical meters. They grab better (once warmed up), they dissipate heat from rotor better and thus fade less. These are very technical descends where you are constantly on brakes lasting for 600-700 vertical meters.

In my experience kevlar/organic fade much much faster (and kevlar from superstar lasts for like 5-8 k vertical meters).

For normal riding where you are not on brakes most of the time, anything will work, but sintered works best for me. This is with 203 mm rotor in front.

Organic for me. I’ve run them in wet gritty conditions in the Alps for days on end with no issues. They are way better in the damp than sintered, quieter and have better modulation and more power. They are better with heat too as the sintered get super hot – due to the metal content obviously. Sintered are designed to wear less.

As you can see from the mixed bag of answers above – it’s down to personal experience, riding style etc.

all I want to do is stop 😀

all I want to do is stop

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cheeeky 😉