Brake pads for carbon rims...

the first time you try to come to a quick stop you'll understand why you need new breakpads.

the rubber is going to be MUCH harder to slow down with, will make a lot of noise, will pick up things from the road that will tear up your braking surfaces.

i forgot to change one pad on one side of my front brake, and now that side of the wheel is all fugly looking (same front wheel as you, blackwell disk rear).

i would check into them.

zipp also makes some.

Swiss Stop "Yellow King" pads are the best pads I've ever used.

DO NOT use your regular brake pads--they accumulate little flakes of aluminum and can scratch up the braking surface on the Blackwells.

The Swiss Stops have been excellent perfomers for me, and I can switch back and forth from my race wheels to my regular alloy rims without any problem. They also work better than any of the "carbon-specific" pads I've used in the past.

Zipp's pads work OK, but wear extremely fast and don't work as well as the Swiss Stops in my experience.

Edited by DrPete 2009-08-17 4:04 PM

x 2 on swiss stops and x2 on aluminum chunks in your normal break pads - take a look at them sometime and you'll see what we mean.

haha i have had the exact other end of things happen with my pads as pete.

my zipp ones are going on two years older (over 30 races and decent amount of training), and still in decent shape.

the swiss stops melted apart in half a season.

but either way get a set of one or the other, your wheels will thank you.

Okay, I am going to go to triathlon hell for this, I'm sure (not that it would be the first time :p)... but I have never switched out my brake pads with my race wheels.

I always make sure nothing is stuck on/in the pads before running my Zipps (404s for a few years, now 808s), but other than that... nothing. My wheels look fine (and my 404s did as well), and I've never had any trouble stopping (in normal, as well as wet, conditions). Honestly, there is relatively little need for coming to an actual stop in a tri, anyway. Scrubbing some speed, yes, occasionally...but the regular pads work fine for that (and b/c my brakes are almost wide open, I have to crank on them pretty good to even do that).

Were I riding carbon wheels as my regular training wheel, I would consider it... but for 6-10 races a year, I don't bother.

Edited by mmrocker13 2009-08-18 9:24 AM

x3 on what Dr Pete said.