Tried swapping brake pads mid-season on my commuter and got a weird result

I run Shimano resin pads all winter because they bite better in the wet. Last month I switched to Jagwire sintered pads thinking they'd last longer for summer riding. After about 60 miles I noticed a horrible squeal that I couldn't tune out. Turns out my old rotors had a glaze from the resin pads that the sintered pads just fought against. I had to sand the rotors down with some 120 grit to break the glaze before they'd work quiet. Anyone else run into a pad material incompatibility like this?

2 comments

2 Comments

abby_chen7d ago

I mean are we really that deep into brake pad conspiracy theories here? I've swapped between resin and sintered pads on the same rotors for years and never had to sand anything down. Could it be that you just got a bad batch of pads or maybe your rotors were already warped and the squeal was from that? 60 miles is barely broken in honestly, I've had pads squeak for the first hundred miles then settle down. Sounds more like you were in a hurry to blame the glaze and grabbed some sandpaper instead of just riding it out for a bit longer.

abbychen7d agoMost Upvoted

Keep seeing this everywhere lately - people grabbing for the most complicated fix when the simple boring answer is probably right. Like my buddy who replaced his whole suspension because of a clunk, turned out to be a loose bolt in his rack.