{"id":2771,"date":"2017-08-16T17:26:11","date_gmt":"2017-08-16T08:26:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.joewein.net\/blog\/?p=2771"},"modified":"2017-08-16T17:26:11","modified_gmt":"2017-08-16T08:26:11","slug":"disc-brake-pad-and-rotor-wear","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/joewein.net\/blog\/2017\/08\/16\/disc-brake-pad-and-rotor-wear\/","title":{"rendered":"Disc brake pad and rotor wear"},"content":{"rendered":"

It looks like I get about 6,000 km of useful life out of the disc brake pads on the front of my main bicycle. That’s about 9 months for me (I ride all year round, about 8,000 to 10,000 km per year).<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Two years ago I switched my Bike Friday Pocket Rocket to a disc brake on the front by replacing the fork and the front wheel. 1 1\/2 years ago I received my Elephant Bikes National Forest Explorer (NFE), a low trail randonneur bike with disc brakes. 9 Months ago I switched the NFE from TRP Spyre mechanical disc brakes with metallic pads to Shimano hydraulic brakes with resin pads. These pads had now worn out, see picture above.<\/p>\n

Along with the brake pads I also replaced the front rotor, as the old one had worn quite thin.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Most of the 7,000 km that I had done on the TRP Spyre brakes I had been using metallic pads, as the factory resin pads wore extremely rapidly: I had to keep adjusting the brakes after each Saturday long ride (typically 130-200 km). The metallic pads needed less attention but were very noisy in the rain. <\/p>\n

My experience with the Shimano BR-RS785 brakes was much better. As hydraulic brakes their pads were self adjusting. There weren’t any noise issues. Wear is quite acceptable: One set of resin pads every 9 months is not too bad and I expect the new brake rotor will last even longer than 13,000 km \/ 20 months now that I am only using resin pads. On top of that the modulation on the hydros is great and they need very little effort. I could not be happier!<\/p>\n

It is good to have real-life figures from actual use as to how quickly parts will wear on the bike so you can do preventive maintenance. It is better to replace a worn out pad at home when you know that it will be due for replacement soon, rather than finding out on a mountain descent that suddenly you’ve got nothing left to stop you! \ud83d\ude41<\/p>\n

Likewise, I regularly replace shifter cables (about once a year), before they wear out enough to break inside the brifters during a ride away from home, as happened twice to me before I learnt that lesson.<\/p>\n

In the past I have been quite easygoing about replacing worn out bicycle chains, but a chain that has “stretched” will wear out your chain rings or cassette more quickly. Chains do decrease in robustness with increasing numbers of gears (from 8 speed to 11 speed) as they increasingly become narrower, so I will probably be replacing my 11 speed chain annually too.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It looks like I get about 6,000 km of useful life out of the disc brake pads on the front of my main bicycle. That’s about 9 months for me (I ride all year round, about 8,000 to 10,000 km … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[46,43,55],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2771","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bike-friday","category-cycling","category-elephant-nfe"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/joewein.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2771","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/joewein.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/joewein.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/joewein.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/joewein.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2771"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/joewein.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2771\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2773,"href":"https:\/\/joewein.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2771\/revisions\/2773"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/joewein.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2771"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/joewein.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2771"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/joewein.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2771"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}