smontanaro 

The brakes on my Jim Redcay have always squealed like a banshee. They have Ambrosio Synthesis Durex rims and until today I was using Kool-Stop salmon pads. A couple days ago I tweaked everything, made sure the pads and rims were clean, and that there was no play in the calipers. No improvement. Today I switched to some new Saavedra black pads. That changed the tune, but the brakes still sing with even the slightest application.

I've used the salmon pads with non-anodized rims with no problem. My next step is going to be to try to wear off the anodizing with some Modolo sinterized pads. They are extremely thick though and will need to be cut down to work with the Campy calipers. Before I take that step I thought I'd ask if people think this will be worthwhile.

SurferRosa

To verify it's a rim issue, switch out the wheels to test.

canopus 

There are two items that really affect brake squeal.

1) Check the pivot bolt(s) for play and make sure there is none. I usually adjust the pivot with the springs out so I can get a good idea of the tightness. Having the spring in means you have to rock them when they are all hooked up to see any play.

2) Brake pad toe-in. Make sure the trailing edge of the pad (the edge to the front of the bike) touches the rim first, before the leading edge (the edge to the rear of the bike). It doesn't have to be much, 1/32" to 1/16" or so. But pad toe-in makes a huge difference. If the leading edge touches the rim first you will, 98% of the time, have brake squeal. Some pads have adjustment that you can adjust the toe-in. If not, just bend the arms to make the adjustment needed.


I have never had a problem with salmon or Scott Mathauser pads and usually use them before anything else due to the better wet braking. I wouldn't bother with the sinterized pads. You should never have to sand/scrap/remove anodizing from the rim to tame a squeal.

Salamandrine 

Campy record brakes and salmon pads almost always squeal. I'm starting to sound like a broken record, but it's still true. The Modolo pads might be OK, but that sounds like kind of a hassle. You may want to try the Kool Stop black pads, or genuine campy replacement pads. I've ridden campy brakes for most of my lifetime miles, and long ago figured out that the campy pads work best on them.

Another point, campy record brake arms should absolutely not be toed in by bending. Let them be.

Last point, sanding rims (lightly!) is sometimes the only way to stop stubborn brake squeal. It will not make your wheels fall off. If you are hesitant to do this, ride down a muddy dirt road from a mountain top in winter, and get the same effect.

mech986 

I’ve used either aluminum foil, aluminum can material or business card stock to shim the forward part of the brake pad holder against the Campagnolo caliper arms. Very little toe-in is needed. I aim for 1/2-2/3 initial contact and get the rest of the pad to close down with deep lever use. You don’t want to toe in so that only the front half contacts and the rest doesn’t meet up with the rim - then you really only have half the total braking pad surface to work with - may not squeal but stopping power is reduced. Others have used a offset or slightly wedged washer to create the tie-in. A 1-2mm alloy washer could easily be filed down on one half to do the same thing for each pad holder.

If using new brake pads, you may consider roughing them up with coarse file (don’t recommend sandpaper as that may leave aluminum oxide or even tougher particles in the pad which will eat up the rim brake surface. With use and then inspection, you will see the wear pattern develop on the pads commensurate with the stopping power and squeal change.

randyjawa 

None of my brakes squeal, as nearly as I can recall. My guess is a simple and proper toe-in will work wonders. As for those Modolo pads, I am not fussy on them at all.

sced

I did everything people have suggested to get salmon pads to quiet down, unsuccessfully.

smontanaro 

Thanks for the replies. As sced indicated, I've tried pretty much everything. The only suggestion I haven't tried of those mentioned is to increase toe-in the pads. In my mind, bending any alloy caliper to achieve the desired toe-in is a crash waiting to happen. I've tried sanding pads to increase toe-in but that seems an inexact science. I've not had much luck with it.

The idea behind using the Modolo sinterized pads is that they are quite abrasive and will deanodize the braking surface in fairly short order. In fact, they were given to me by a compatriot over on the iBOB list for precisely this reason. He noticed bits of aluminum on his Modolo pads and realized they were effectively eating his irreplaceable vintage rims, so stopped using them for anything other than this specific task. To SurferRosa 's point, I can verify that K-S salmon pads work fine on my unanodized rims. I have two bikes currently which run anodized rims, the Griffon (Ambrosio Montreal Durex, whose squeal I can mitigate with careful application of the breaks) and the Redcay which sounds like a "soprano with a bad cold" at the slightest touch of the brakes.

Finally, canopus I think you have "trailing" and "leading" swapped in your reply. Might want to edit in case someone stumbles on this thread in the future.

dddd

When I used the Modolo sinterized pads with anodized rims 30 years ago, I found that I had to frequently remove a pattern of melted pad material from both sides of the rim.
The braking was very badly affected and I don't remember these pads working very well at any time.

canopus 

In thirty eight years, I've never had an issue toeing in calipers, ever, and I don't have squeals either. From BMX to freestyle to road bikes. I have never had a caliper fail due to a toe in procedure.

That is the reason most riders back then stopped using the Modolo sinterized pads. The thing about sanding and removing anodizing to solve a brake problem is this... You wouldn't tell a customer that just spent 5000 on a bike that you had to sand his rims down to stop a squeal would you? Not if you wanted to keep them as a customer.

Nope, those are correct in my mind as the bike rolls forward, the edge of the pad towards the front of the bike needs to touch the rim first, It is trailing the leading edge of the pad as the wheel turns.

Salamandrine 

I sold a lot of new bikes with new campy record brakes BITD. None of them squealed. Know why? They had new campy pads on those brakes, not salmons.

IMO it's basically sacrilege to bend a vintage campy caliper arm to achieve toe in, and besides that it simply isn't necessary.

smontanaro 

Of course, most of my brakes came to me used with no indication if they'd been bent to achieve the desired toe-in. I stand by my statement. Not risking it.

But, I'm not a dealer. I have no customers to keep/make happy, just me. My rims aren't new. They are already a few decades old. As I indicated, my plan is not to use these pads permanently, just to remove some/most/all of the anodizing on the brake tracks.

We will have to agree to disagree on this then. In the car world, toe-in means the leading edge of the disc/drum/wheel (nearer to the front of the car) is closer to the center line than the trailing edge (nearer to the rear). It has always been my understanding that the meaning is the same in the bike world.

smontanaro 

As I indicated, I replaced the salmons with new (old stock) Saavedra black pads. In this case it made no difference. I'm trying other things. KS salmon pads give me no trouble on non-anodized rims. Based on my limited experience it seems to me that anodized rims + salmon pads are a noisy combination. I'm trying to come up with a quiet combination. Might I break down and go buy some, but to start with I'm trying to work with what I have in my parts bin.

dddd

Absolutely.

You can't go on bending forged aluminum indefinitely, and one never knows the history of used parts, of whether some bending was done in the past, perhaps more than once.

I use any toeing as a last resort, using abrasive methods on the pads. Sometimes the brake squeals because the caliper is mounted a little off-axis from the wheel, tilting each pad in a different toe attitude and thus making one pad squeal.

So before attempting any deliberate toe-in of either pad, I will first use an accelerated break-in process wherein the rim surface carries a strip of belt-sandpaper past the pad surface under actual braking load.
I've posted this before, the wheel is pushed forward with the sandpaper past the brake pad surface, under braking load as shown below.

Where the above fails to cure a squeal, the remaining choices are to use a different pad material or to create some toe somehow, preferably using swivel-mounted pads.

Note that the black/salmon dual-compound pads having the stickier black compound facing forward (as the trailing edge of the pad) will be less prone to squeal than would be a pad of just the black rubber, this because the leading edge of the pad (which faces rearward) is the culprit where the grabbing harmonic originates.

Also note that having the brake pad offset toward the rear helps to prevent the braking force vector from energizing the harmonic, as the added leverage of the pad induces twist in the favored toe-in direction.

Here's the "accelerated break-in method" in action. It also cleans up (removes) old pad' s surfaces for subsequent evaluation on the road.

Salamandrine 

OK, sorry I missed that. I'm not familiar with Saavedra pads, or I may have forgotten. How old are they? Old dried out pads of any sort will have a tendency to squeal. A few years ago when I rebuilt my PX10, I left the old pads in place for the 'first' ride, figuring how bad could they be. I rode MAFAC for years BITD and never had any noise issues with the stock pads. I got up to the top of our local hill here, 1300ft or so, and started back down. Hit the brakes the first time, bike barely slows down, yet I'm sure that wail could have been heard a mile away. Hilarious. Took a while to get down because it seemed like 87% of the kinetic energy was being converted to noise, not stopping. New black koolstops fixed it immediately.

Anyway, do these Saavedra pads work on your non anodized rims?

I know there's this whole thing today about disk brakes and how they are great because they don't wear through your rims like rim brakes. It really was more or less SOP to sand rims lightly to reduce squeak BITD. If you rode a lot, the anodizing on the sides would be worn off in a couple weeks anyway, so no great sacrifice.

smontanaro 

Got 'em from Mike Fraysse a few years ago but hadn't used them. He's still selling them on eBay, must have a bunch:

Vintage Campagnolo Style Record, Super Record Brake Pads, By Saavedra. NOS.

I have no idea how old they were when he sold them. I "sanded" them with a rasp before installing. Good point about trying them somewhere else. I haven't tried that, but as they have been temporarily (at least) relegated to the parts bin, I should give that a try.

Salamandrine 

Yeah, I do the same thing. Helps seat the pads and removes any glazing. Be careful of the paint! Sometimes cleaning off the surface glaze is enough to fix problems. Really old pads can be dry all the way through though, and this won't work.

If anyone follows my advice to lightly sand rims, do this ^^^ first. BTW don't use ~80 grit emery on the rims. 320 is sufficient, maybe 220. All you are doing is getting rid of the gloss and and cleaning off gummy stuff. This won't help if the pads are toast.

Kabuki12

I rarely have the issue but it can be annoying at the very least. I have removed a small amount of glazed [ad material either with a file as mech986 suggests or a grinding wheel(wear a mask) with the grinding wheel method you can carefully put a little toe in on them but be careful , the material grinds away easily! Most of the time the squeal is from a bike sitting for a long period without use or using a polish on the wheels and not cleaning the brake portion with denatured alcohol after.

Last ride 76 

Try the alcohol, may clean off something the other stuff hasn't.
Luckily, I have not had a problem with those same Savedra pads. I don't twist my brake arms (on purpose, anyway).

What may make a difference, Is cleaning, greasing and re-tightening the contact points on the arms and washers. light corrosion I remove w/ old piece of 600 wet paper, wet and a dot of soap. once greased and re-assembled I tighten on the bolt until they are too tight, then back off a hair.
Also Check hub play just for the heck of it. Are the wheels evenly tensioned. Older lightish tensioning or strung tight? I had a new build squeak w/cyclones and found play between the bolt face arms and washers. Greased and tightened, so far so good.
Don't bend'em<< my opinion...
Cheers, Eric

Last ride 76 

Incredible how much stuff he has, between Paris Sport, managing/coaching a lifetime's worth of teams and individuals. I just scored a set of LA84 Bullhorns from him 2 hours ago, for my funny bike. A bike I got cheap last winter - off the "are you looking" thread, had a new DS Campy dropout brazed in, by whoever was wielding the torch in his shop back in '87.Lots of connections ran through him.
Cheers, Eric

smontanaro 

They were just sitting already in holders after the failed try on the Redcay, so I swapped them onto my ItalVega with its non-anodized Super Champion rims. Then I took a quick trip to the hardware store (a mile or so one way.) There was virtually no noise, and they stop better than the Kool-Stops did, so I'll leave them on that bike. Previously, the brakes on that bike were just advisory. I'll try cleaning the rims to see if that makes them even better.