Originally Posted by
gorshkov
When I lived in Seattle and commuted in wet, crappy weather all winter, my LBS recommended sanding the brake pads pretty regularly to get the bits of metal out. These accumulate alarmingly rapidly when riding in wet weather.
Sanding the pads is a good idea. If the pads are glazed over, you don't have as good of braking as you can get. But sanding really doesn't get the aluminum out, unless you want to sand a lot of the pad away. Just pick the pieces of aluminum out of the pads. I usually use either a razor blade or one of my "pokey tools". Which ever I see first on the bench.