This guide is road bikes with calliper rim brakes only. If you have a hybrid/mountain bike with V-brakes and pads with threaded stud, these won’t be suitable. The same goes for touring/cyclocross bikes spec’d with cantilever brakes that take a smooth stud. Which pad for which rim

Kool Stop Features: Angled Water Groove | Asymmetrical Design | Dual Compound | Plow Tip | Salmon Compound | Spherical Washers If your brakes are prone to squealing, the Dual Compound models shoud reduce the noise pollution while still giving excellent stopping power.

You can trust Cycling Weekly. Our team of experts put in hard miles testing cycling tech and will always share honest, unbiased advice to help you choose. Find out more about how we test. Most Kool Stop models feature an off-center attachment, so that the rear section of the shoe is quite a bit longer than the front. This goes a long way toward evening out the pressure along the surface of the brake shoe in practice. A softer compound will be more grippy and offer better braking – especially in the wet. However, because the compound is softer, it will wear faster than a harder compound. On the bright side, a soft compound is easier on the rims, meaning they’ll last longer before you have to replace them. For nasty winter conditions they transform a set of Shimano Dura Ace calipers – especially in the wet and grungy weather we are currently used to. However we’ve also used them in the summer through the mountains and the results are reassuring. There’s no rim grabbing or brake fade as the compound heats up on long descents. In fact all the Kool Stop stuff seems to wear very well. Scott-Mathauser and the "Salmon" pad. Despite the superior design of Kool Stop brake shoes, for years, Scott-Mathauser brake shoes were the finest available, due to their patented salmon-colored rubber formula. (The "secret ingredient" is iron oxide, a.k.a. "rust", which is what gave them their distinctive color.

Better brake pads are a surprisingly cheap upgrade, especially for something that so dramatically effects both your safety and your performance. Chain reaction Cycles and CRC are trading names of Wiggle Ltd (In Administration) registered in the United Kingdom at 1000 Lakeside, Suite 310, Third Floor N E Wing, Portsmouth, Hampshire, PO6 3EN, This is the classic choice where it fits. The Eagle 2 will fit most rear brakes, but due to the long rear section, there may be clearance problems in some front brakes. If your rim/forkblade clearance is tight, you should choose the Thinline model. Swissstop’s nomenclature for their pads takes a second to get your head round, but it makes sense once you know it.If your brakes, caliper or cantilever, use threaded hardware, the "Mountain" model is the very best you can get, for road or off road use. The callipers, cable housing, and brake levers all have a role in determining how a braking system performs but it is the pads that have the greatest singular effect. The Dual Compound feature is available in the Top-of-the line MTB Dual Compound and Thinline threaded models, and in the Eagle 2 with smooth studs Scott-Mathauser brake shoes were manufactured under contract by Kool Stop, but the hardware and shoe shape was determined by Scott-Mathauser. The less expensive Scott-Mathauser shoes had rather clunky mounting hardware; the deluxe models were overpriced and featured bogus "cooling fins." Despite these limitations, the very special Scott-Mathauser compound was so much better than anything else available, that Scott-Mathauser brake shoes were widely recognized as the best perfomers in their day.

Angled Water Groove | Asymmetrical Design | Dual Compound | Plow Tip | Salmon Compound | Spherical WashersWhether you’re slowing into a corner or pulling up at a junction, the consequences of an unreliable set of brakes don’t bare thinking about. These deliver the strong and consistent stopping power you would expect from top-flight Campy pads. What is less expected is that Campagnolo also produce a Sram/Shimano version of these pads as well – so that those on the dark side can enjoy superb braking on carbon rims as well. After the pads, the next most significant improvement you can make to your brakes is upgrading to quality compressionless cable housing. When you squeeze the brake lever, some of the force goes into clamping the pads against the rim, but some is lost as the cable housing is compressed. If you’ve already bought yourself some fancy carbon rims, it’s worth getting some top-quality pads to go with them.