Disc Brakes

There are generally two types of contaminated.

There is the type that is mud and grit and all that nice junk one can pick up on a road. That is easily cleaned off by sanding usually. Take a sheet of 120 grit or so sandpaper on a table and make circular motions with the pad. After the first few strokes, make sure not to overlap the grindings as this would defeat the purpose. You don't want to take off a ton, just enough to get the bad part off.

THe other type is the lubricant contaminant. This is brake fluid, chain oil, bearing lube, sometimes even exhaust(I parked next to a tractor once).
This is a much harder one to fix. It involves getting a can of Brakleen parts cleaner(good to have anyway) the afore mentioned sanding, and a clean white t-shirt. As you sand, rinse it with the brakleen, then run it over the rag. Eventually you will see a change in color, assuming it was pretty bad.

For type 2 I generally will just replace the pads unless they are really new. Once they have a few hard stops on them the oils are fused through the compund and there is no real good way to help it.

Hope that answered a few things.

Conniebiker said:

There are generally two types of contaminated.

There is the type that is mud and grit and all that nice junk one can pick up on a road. That is easily cleaned off by sanding usually. Take a sheet of 120 grit or so sandpaper on a table and make circular motions with the pad. After the first few strokes, make sure not to overlap the grindings as this would defeat the purpose. You don't want to take off a ton, just enough to get the bad part off.

THe other type is the lubricant contaminant. This is brake fluid, chain oil, bearing lube, sometimes even exhaust(I parked next to a tractor once).
This is a much harder one to fix. It involves getting a can of Brakleen parts cleaner(good to have anyway) the afore mentioned sanding, and a clean white t-shirt. As you sand, rinse it with the brakleen, then run it over the rag. Eventually you will see a change in color, assuming it was pretty bad.

For type 2 I generally will just replace the pads unless they are really new. Once they have a few hard stops on them the oils are fused through the compund and there is no real good way to help it.

Hope that answered a few things.

Thank you very much for your reply, If the sanding doesn't work then I will have to buy new pads, now is their different types of pads out there.

Regards Steve

The pad types are mostly proprietary, but I will try to give some guidelines.

Stock Compound(usually works adequate in the widest array of conditions.)
Soft Compund (Designed for grip-is-everything riding, but suffers in durability)
Hard Compound (Made for extreme/adverse conditions such as sandy or muddy trails).
There are more varieties out there, but I beleive it would do little to elaborate further. Due to varied conditions/ride styles, I think the LBS is probbably most accurate to reccomend type. That is unless your stock ones were satisfactory(which they usually are).

Thx for all your help, I have managed to get the pads out and sanded them with smooth sandpaper I also cleaned the disc's with a degreaser and put everything back together. At first it seemed to have worked but the squeeking came back so it looks like I will have to buy new pads afterall. We are doing the tassie bike ride in a couple of weeks along the west coast which is very hilly, I guess then it would be best to buy a softer compound then.

Thx again for all your help Conniebiker

Regards Steve