I’m on ride number three on a new mountain bike. Just realized today that I never bed-in my brakes. Is its too late? Am I going to have poor braking performance now? I’m hoping I can just do the bed-in prices before my next ride but open to suggestions.
by Advanced-Beyond7929
10 Comments
Nah. You are fine. Bedding in brakes is something you do so when you go on a real ride they work well. If you are on ride 3 they are already bedded in.
In my opinion if your brakes work well then you’ve bedded them in. Its not a crucial process that makes a massive difference in my experience anyway. If they work now chill, they’re not all of a sudden going to stop working because you missed bedding in.
Do you have good braking power? Are they nice and quiet? If the answer to these is yes, then you’re probably just fine. Bedding in brakes is just a controlled initial heating cycle to transfer new pad material to the rotor. This can happen on its own if you don’t ride too hard right off the rip. If you don’t have any ill-symptoms from your brakes, I would not worry and just keep riding.
Bedding in brakes is something that is wildly overhyped and can be done in a single ride, just gently brake until you feel them start to bite
You will know when they are not working well. If it works great now, you are perfectly fine.
Throw the whole bike away dude, just start over.
It doesn’t matter bro.
I never do off trail bed-in, just do a warm up blue and they’ll be good
I haven’t bedded brakes in forever. Just go ride and they will bed in naturally.
Not bedding in your brakes CAN cause issues like vibrations or squealing. It’s best to do a parking lot process where you start by lightly slowing yourself down and turn up the braking intensity, and a big one is to never lock up the brakes or come to a complete stop so you get a nice even deposit of the pad material on the rotors. It’s best to do that, but performance gains are marginal at best, as long as you aren’t getting vibrations or squealing (would come from overheating the brakes and glazing the pads by riding really steep terrain before they are bedded in). If you aren’t having issues, you’re fine, If you are, touch up the pads and rotors with fine grit sandpaper and do a proper bed in procedure and you’ll be good