Squealing brakes is one of the most
irritating things you can suffer from
when out riding mountain bikes
and the squeels can range from
ear-piercing shrieks all the way to horrendous howling,
sometimes even vibration that you
can feel through your hands.
So this is everything you need to know
about this brake squeeling and how to solve it.
So firstly, what causes brake squeel?
Usually, the culprit tends to be
brakes that haven't been bedded in correctly.
And the bedding in process itself,
the whole point of it,
is to deposit some pad residue
from the pad onto the disc rotor.
And if this hasn't been done correctly,
you'll get an uneven amount of pad residue
on the rotors and that causes microscopic
sort of waves along the disc rotor,
of which the brake pad itself will vibrate.
And that vibration turns into squeeling.
Now the other thing that can make
your brakes squeel is oil contamination.
Now this can happen in a variety of different ways
because there are so many different
sources of oil on a bike.
The most likely one is that the banjo, or the cable itself,
near the front calliper in particular,
could be leaking onto the pistons and the brake pads.
So make sure that all of your relevant bolts are tight
and you've got no oil leaks and
make sure you check up at the brake lever as well
because oil can just travel down outside of the hose.
Same goes for the back.
Make sure they're always clean
and there's no sign of any sort of standing oil.
The next one is a bit of an unusual one but
it's actually something that does affect a lot of people.
It is handling the disc rotors
themselves with your bare hands.
Now, you could have touched oily stuff on your bike
and transferred it over or you
could just have slightly oily skin.
Now that does actually have quite and effect
on the squeeling of brake pads.
So the final thing to take into account is
if you use any kind of spray lubricant
or water displacer on your bike.
When you spray that, even like breezy days can transfer
that sort of mist all the way towards your disc rotors.
Be super vigilant when you're doing this
because the tiniest bit of that oil mist
can really ruin your brake pads and rotors.
So those are obviously the two main candidates
for brake squeel, but there is one more.
And you tend to hear this in bike parks around the world
where people are cooking their brakes hard all day long.
Now that is vibration that's being
transmitted through the frame.
Now you are seeing on some people's bikes
you're seeing vibration dampers
and they help sort of dampen out that vibration
so the brakes don't squeel, you don't
feel as much of it through the bars.
When I was checking out Gee Atherton's pro bike
in Whistler earlier this year,
he had a little custom brake damper fitted.
If you check that out it's a really cool bit of tech
but you're talking literally a handful of bikes
that are going to suffer from this problem.
So there are also a few alternative methods
for stopping brake pad squeel.
I probably wouldn't do these myself,
but up to you if you want to try these.
So a classic is to use copper slip
on the back of your brake pads.
So this is something that comes
from motorbikes and the world of cars,
and the pads themselves can vibrate
which causes some kind of squeeling.
And copper slip, if you put it on the back of the pad,
so that's contacting the piston, the tiniest amount,
and it just forms a little barrier
and helps absorb that sort of motion.
So apparently it works really well but
I wouldn't be inclined to put any sort of
grease or lubricant anywhere near my disc break pads.
Okay so two other methods that I
certainly wouldn't recommend that
apparently work quite well is to soak
your brake pads in alcohol and burn
the solution off completely.
Apparently that gets rid of the residue
and no more squeaky brakes.
And a blowtorch is also being mentioned as well.
You shouldn't really play with fire,
you're gonna get burnt, aren't you?
So this is how you stop your brake pads squeeling.
Bear in mind that this is not going to work for you
if your brakes are contaminated with oil.
You can obviously try this because
it might save you a few quid,
but they're never gonna be perfect.
So this is for everyone that hasn't bedded
their brake pads in properly and you are
suffering from some squeeling.
First up, these are the tools you're gonna need.
Nitro safety gloves,
brake cleaner,
needlenose pliers,
and a block.
Coarse, abrasive paper,
lint-free shop towels,
torques T-25,
2.5 millimetre allen key.
So first things first, you'll want to
remove your disc rotor off the wheel
and you'll want to remove your brake pads from the bike.
So I'm putting my gloves on straight away
because I don't want any chance of oil from my hands
getting onto the brake pads.
So I'm just gonna need needlenose pliers
and the 2.5 mil allen key for these particular brakes.
Just gonna remove the retaining circlet there.
Set that aside.
Use the allen key just to undo the retaining bolt there.
Remove that and then take the pads
straight out of the calliper.
So using the torques T-25, just undo your disc rotor bolts.
Remove these, put these aside, and
remove the rotor from the bike.
And then the next step is to start cleaning.
So with your disc brake rotors and pads
removed from the bike, your next step
is to start cleaning them.
So to do this, you want either isopropyl alcohol or,
preferably, a decent disc brake cleaner.
So stuff like this, and WD 40 is really good stuff,
and it really does strip off all of
the sort of crap that you don't want on there.
The next step is to use a really sort of
wet and dry paper, or emory paper,
sort of sand paper effectively,
to give them a good scrubbing and make sure
there's none of that horrible stuff left.
Then you want to do the same with the disc rotors.
So on the rotors themselves, you can see here
these have been bedded incorrectly
but you can see there's no pad residue on that rotor.
So if I put a new set of brake pads on this, as it is,
it would be pretty unlikely that they're gonna bite
as well as the current ones do.
So what I want to do is just remove everything I can
and give them a good scrubbing
so the surface has got enough to bite onto those pads.
So I'm just gonna clean one pad at a time here.
Just putting it on the bed of the shop towel.
I've got my protective nitro rubber gloves on,
both to stop oil from my hands going to the pads
and, of course, to stop the solvent
in the cleaners doing anything to my skin.
So make sure you do this somewhere well-ventilated
because this is not the sort of stuff
you want to be inhaling too much.
If any doubt, use a sort of a dust mask
or even something like a pair of goggles.
Now this stuff does evaporate really well
so you want to make sure you give em
a good wipedown with a towel.
You can see that there's residue
already coming off these pads.
I'm actually gonna clean both sides
just to make sure that they're as
in the best condition possible.
Really wanna make these feel like they're
a brand new set of brake pads.
Now the brake cleaner does evaporate
so once you've cleaned one and you're happy with that,
just set it aside and then put a bit more shop towel
on top of the pile here and well go again with the next one.
You're next step is to get the pads onto the block here
with the sandpaper already in place
and give them a good rubbing down.
Just wanna make sure you've
there's no chance of any of that residue
still being on there.
Of course by doing this, and we're gonna
do the same to the disc rotors,
it creates a surface that's gonna mat really well together.
And you're gonna be able to bed in your brakes and rotors
and they'll work perfectly.
So I'm happy with that, that's been cleaned properly,
and after I've scrubbed it back down
on the sandpaper block there,
I'm just gonna give this a final clean
and then set that one aside for reinstallation.
Of course have to do exactly
the same process on the other one.
Okay so both pads have been cleaned properly
using this brake cleaner and I've
scrubbed them down on the sanding block.
Just wanna make sure that any of that sort of
pad material that has come off
on the sanding block is just removed.
Just gonna give them a final clean
and then just set them aside
just so they can completely dry out.
Okay so same principle with the disc rotor itself.
Give it a good dousing with the spray.
Work your way around it and you're
trying to take off any residue you can.
You might need a fair bit of spray just to
make sure this is done.
Gonna flip it over, do the same on the other side.
So with a fresh bit of paper on the block,
work your way around the whole disc rotor braking surface
and you just sort of want to roughen this up.
And the idea is that will mix really well
with the roughened up brake pad surface
and you'll get that good residue transfer.
So note, on the first side of the disc rotor here,
it's cleaned and it's quite shiny,
but it's not been roughened up yet.
So notice that the braking surface is quite shiny
and almost polished looking.
What you want to do is rough it up so it
actually looks like this side here that I've roughened up.
And you'll notice that the shininess is gone,
it's very much sort of a satin matte finish on there
and it's quite rough to the touch.
That is exactly what you're looking for
because that mimics what a brand new
disc brake rotor feels like.
So there you go.
So I've restored the braking surfaces
on both the disc brake pads and
of course the rotor itself on both sides.
So all I need to do is reverse the process
of removing them from the bike to put them back on.
And then when I head out, bed them in properly.
So hopefully this has been useful for all you
and if you want to find out how to actually
bed those brake pads in, click right down here.
That's a perfect video for you.
And if you want to find out about the vibration damper
that I was talking about on Gee Atherton's bike,
check right down here for the Pro Bike on his bike.
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