The point: do ceramic rims significantly improve breaking performance?
The long version: I've been riding two bikes lately, a tiagra bike with thousands of miles and a shiny almost new ultegra bike. The brakes on the tiagra bike are awful in comparison. In an attempt to remedy this I have replaced the pads, do my dismay it still doesn't break anywhere near as well. Do I need to break the pads in, wear the surface even to increase surface area? are tektro pads just not good (the shimano ones are steep)? would replacing the brake cable help (it's sort of rusted but I can't really feel any stretch) ? how about lubing the cable? teflon based lube? Is this just going to be a difference between the calipers, and the only fix would be new calipers? The fellow at the bike shop mentioned I had polished my rims by braking, decreased the coefficient of friction of the surface, I'm under the impression that these ceramic coated rims have a greater coefficient of friction. Anybody use them how do they work?
The long version: I've been riding two bikes lately, a tiagra bike with thousands of miles and a shiny almost new ultegra bike. The brakes on the tiagra bike are awful in comparison. In an attempt to remedy this I have replaced the pads, do my dismay it still doesn't break anywhere near as well. Do I need to break the pads in, wear the surface even to increase surface area? are tektro pads just not good (the shimano ones are steep)? would replacing the brake cable help (it's sort of rusted but I can't really feel any stretch) ? how about lubing the cable? teflon based lube? Is this just going to be a difference between the calipers, and the only fix would be new calipers? The fellow at the bike shop mentioned I had polished my rims by braking, decreased the coefficient of friction of the surface, I'm under the impression that these ceramic coated rims have a greater coefficient of friction. Anybody use them how do they work?