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Yesterday, I cleaned my 5 months old bike using WD-40 Bike HEAVY DUTY DEGREASER and removed some dirt and brake material residue from the wheels. Now my front brakes moan.

I did go through this question and I did set toe-in to around 2 mm, which helped somewhat. Now it's just moaning, not moaning like an old train braking.

I also sanded the pad surface a tiny little bit with a 2000 grit sandpaper. The pads are clean and free from any derbies or foreign particles. They still have some 3 mm before the wear indicator.

The wear on the pads looks mostly even, but there's a bit of unevenness due to the wheel rim wear indicator, but I checked and those points are making good contact with the interior of the indicator.

I'm not really sure what to do now. Most of the searches provide me either with the toe-in solution or give results for disc brakes.

Community
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AndrejaKo
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  • Also I'm a bike newbie, so any pointers on how to make my question clearer and easier to answer would be very helpful! – AndrejaKo Jun 06 '16 at 12:56
  • that is weird usually it is because of dirt. Did you use some product to clean your wheel? – kifli Jun 06 '16 at 13:08
  • @kifli I used a WD-40 Bike HEAVY DUTY DEGREASER product. I've rinsed the bicycle afterwards with water, as instructed in the manual. – AndrejaKo Jun 06 '16 at 13:14
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    Try re-cleaning the rims with rubbing alcohol and then seeing if the sound goes away after a bit of riding+brake use. – Batman Jun 06 '16 at 13:51
  • @Batman At the place where I am now, I can't easily obtain "rubbing alcohol"(I assume you mean isopropanol?). Any alternatives that you can recommend? – AndrejaKo Jun 06 '16 at 13:58
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    Wash the surfaces with a bit of dish or laundry detergent in water, rinse well, then just live with it for awhile. Sooner or later the brakes will settle and the situation will improve, if the toe-in is halfway right. – Daniel R Hicks Jun 06 '16 at 15:24
  • @AndrejaKo - Vodka (40-50% ethanol) or everclear (95% ethanol) would work too. Rubbing alcohol is just isopropanol or ethanol (typically the former in the US) with some water added to dilute it (not really important, but you want the higher alcohol stuff) and some denaturant (not important; this is just so you don't drink it). Rubbing alcohol is the type of alcohol you use to swab cuts and stuff. – Batman Jun 06 '16 at 16:19
  • Once you ride a bit, some rubber will coat the rims, which will reduce the noise (brakes are always moaning due to vibration; its just that they're normally at frequencies we can't hear). – Batman Jun 06 '16 at 16:36
  • Note that, when setting "toe-in", it's quite easy to get it exactly backwards. – Daniel R Hicks Jun 07 '16 at 18:00
  • @Daniel R Hicks Can you elaborate a bit? I mean, which part should be bent? – AndrejaKo Jun 07 '16 at 18:21
  • You don't (or shouldn't) bend parts to toe-in a V brake. – Daniel R Hicks Jun 07 '16 at 18:23
  • @Daniel R Hicks Sorry, I used a bad term. What I meant was in which direction should the pad be angled? – AndrejaKo Jun 07 '16 at 18:24
  • On a standard wheel (one with the brake more or less above the wheel), the end of the pad closest to the front of the bike should touch the rim first as you apply the brakes. – Daniel R Hicks Jun 07 '16 at 18:30

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Do NOT use WD-40 of any kind on your rims if you use rim brakes. WD-40 leaves a residue. If you have contaminated your rims, clean them off with rubbing alchohol. Once you do that, it'll be like starting with new brakes, so they will take a little brake in to get dirt and rubber re-imbedded in your rims. If the pads have been contaminated with WD-40, and it sounds like they have, replace them. Pads are cheap.

Lee-Man
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    This has nothing to do with regular WD-40. Its a bike cleaning product sold under the WD-40 brand. – Batman Jun 06 '16 at 16:15
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    @Batman, still not a good idea to use a heavy duty degreaser from any brand to clean rims unless the residue is cleaned off with alcohol after. Pads are likely contaminated. – zenbike Jun 06 '16 at 21:04
  • It is still a degreaser, and degreasers are semi-evil anyway, since they don't know how to step degreasing when they get to your bearings. Advice still stands: don't use it on wheel rims. They shouldn't be greasy anyway. – Lee-Man Jun 06 '16 at 21:19
  • @Lee-Man As I mentioned, the bicycle was rinsed with water afterwards. Additional cleaning with 40% Ethanol and 19% 2-Propanol mixture produced no results. – AndrejaKo Jun 06 '16 at 21:39
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    Then your pads are likely contaminated. Additionally, once you get things correct, even with new pads and newly-adjusted V-brakes, it still might make a little noise until you break it in. I know squealing v-brakes can be a pain, which is one of the many reasons most folks use disc breaks. Lastly, rinsing off rims after using a degreaser is not enough! I rarely use a degreaser, and when I do I'm careful where it goes, because it contaminates disc brake pads too. – Lee-Man Jun 06 '16 at 21:49
  • in my experience, Disc brakes squeal happens more often, is usually louder, and is harder to silence than V brakes. V Brakes are usually easy to silence - set tow in and bed them in. – mattnz Jun 07 '16 at 02:29