Bedding new brake pads

[Arindend]

Hi guys, I got new rear brake pads on my glory a couple days ago, and having ridden yesterday my rear brakes do not feel anywhere near as responsive as before/or in comparison to my front brakes. I phoned the shop, where the mechanic said it would just take a couple of rides for the pads to bed...has anyone else had this experience & how long can I expect to wait before my brakes are performing again?

Thanks all for your help! You'll put a worried mind at ease

 

[omac]

A couple of looooong Dh runs used to work for me

 

[Ridenparadise]

It can depend on the brake and pad material. However, the aim is to make the rotor and the pad surfaces identically smooth by heating them to the point they start to smooth off matching the imperfections on the rotor to the pad. Usually this is by holding a gentle pressure a number of times before you really slam them on. You don't want to overheat the rotor and glaze it and the pad, reducing efficiency.

So a number of 30-60 second gentle descents, or maybe holding pad pressure on as you pedal on the flat will usually work. I say usually because there can be exceptions. Brakeforce One recommend maximum pressure on 20 consecutive downhill runs as best for their pads (which strangely are resin, not sintered).

 

[DoubleD]

This is a paper on why you need in brakes

http://www.centricparts.com/files/Centric White Paper C2-Bed-In Theory.pdf

Once you put new pads in you need to get everything really hot to properly bed in. In my rally car years ago with hard pads that meant literally smoking hot. On the bike I find a hill and ride down it, apply the brakes hard and keep pushing hard on the pedals to generate a lot of heat. About 10 minutes of this for each end seems to do the trick.

Sent from my Nexus 4 using Tapatalk

 

[bell.cameron]

I normally just pedal around the driveway/up and down the road for a bit while holding the brakes on, it doesnt take much to get heat into them. I read somewhere a while ago that you just need to get them warm enough to sizzle when you wet them, and that seems to always have worked for me.

 

[donny70]

I cycle around my neighborhood with rubber bands on the brake levers and after around 10 mins it gets really hard to pedal and the rotors are red hot. Job done.

 

[Ezkaton]

I tend to ride up and down my street just gaining some speed and doing hard stops over and over for a good 5-10 minutes.
Gradually with each stop you feel the power increasing... and after that they're pretty fine.

 

[Dozer]

The best thing I do is push your brake pistons back in before you put the new pads in. Once you've put the pads in you roll around on the street giving it a few good pumps to get some feeling back then do a few sprints and hard stops to warm the surfaces up. This also sets the surfaces of the pads and rotor in harmony and gets them bonding better but to improve that bond you should have a spray bottle full of clean water on the ground where you're stopping. Do some hard stops, spray the rotor and the pads and repeat around ten times. It'll squeal a lot and will feel pretty crap but it comes good after a few spins. This has worked for me 100% and has given me confidence on hitting the trail without the hassle of setting my brakes up away from tools etc.