The other day I had a two-day break,
and on the first day I went to Shodoshima.
I'll write about the things I noticed
and what happened while I was there.
This is the parking lot at the summit of Kankakei Gorge.
Although it's called the summit, it's not actually the highest elevation—
depending on the route,
the elevation drops about 100 meters from the top of the climb.
There are roughly four routes:
the South Route (Blue Line) climbing from Kusaki (Prefectural Route 29),
the East Route from Fukuda Port (Prefectural Route 246,
which merges with the Blue Line partway),
the North Route from Prefectural Route 31,
and the West Route starting slightly north of Tonosho Port
(Prefectural Route 27 / Kankakei Skyline).
Since my route was in at Sakaide Port and out at Tonosho Port,
I couldn't leave my gear in coin lockers at the ports,
so I carried Campagnolo's large backpack
the whole time.
The route names I mentioned earlier aren't official—
I'm just calling them that myself—
but I climbed Kankakei via the East Route
and descended via the West Route.
The West Route, the Kankakei Skyline,
has steep grades where speed builds up easily, and
I didn't have time to take photos,
so this is from Google Maps,
but these emergency refuge areas are set up.
They're sand and soil embankments designed to stop vehicles
if the brakes overheat and fail,
but because the road surface is formed in a wave-like pattern,
if you actually enter one at the speeds necessary,
the car will likely be damaged.
With modern cars having better brake performance,
this facility is pretty much unnecessary anymore.
Not long ago I rode up a place called Senbayama
from Aridagawa in Wakayama,
climbing switchbacks.
It's apparently called the "Wakayama Alpe d'Huez,"
but on the way back I didn't take the same road—
I went to the summit of Senbayama
(there's nothing there except a small shelter)
and then I went to the summit of Washigamine,
then descended an old road with rough pavement and narrow width.
That's where my front brake started to fade,
and the braking power dropped dramatically.
From that terror, I seriously considered whether
maybe road bikes actually do need a rear brake—
I was really reconsidering my position.
The disc rotor turned a copper color,
and judging from the color, the surface temperature
was definitely over 200°C.
Later when I checked the data,
the descent gradient averaged -13%,
with a maximum of -21%.
After the fade occurred once,
the piston didn't return cleanly,
and whether on Senbayama or Kankakei,
from then on the brake pads continuously
rubbed against the disc rotor with a scratching sound.
On Shodoshima the next day I rode a bit over 200 km,
and they kept rubbing the whole time.
If I lift the front wheel and spin it by hand
it stops after just over one rotation,
but when actually riding I can't really feel it—
just hear the noise—so I didn't fix it out there.
↑This is SwissStop 35E brake pads,
currently spec for SRAM road bikes.
The numbers indicate the shape—
for example, Shimano road pads would be 34,
and Campagnolo would be 30.
The E means the backing plate is silver,
while there's also RS with a yellow backing plate.
According to Japanese distributors,
E uses resin material, is high-durability,
gentle on rotors, and produces low noise—
but this is completely false.
First, the resin pads lack the characteristic
feeling of strong initial bite,
what's called "initial bite."
Also, if the disc rotor is wet,
you get quite a loud screeching sound.
SRAM calls resin pads "organic"
and metal pads "sintered,"
and they tell you not to use organic pads
on rotors that were previously used with sintered pads.
I use the term "contaminated,"
because sintered-contaminated rotors
will produce less noise than sintered in the rain,
but still quite loud.
SwissStop E lacks the strong initial bite feel,
produces loud noise in the rain if the rotor is wet
(better than SRAM sintered, but still loud),
and I've confirmed that contamination occurs on rotors,
so in terms of characteristics it's a metal-type pad.
On top of that, metal pads' advantage of providing
better stopping power deep in the lever pull
than resin pads—that's missing.
And it doesn't wear slowly like metal pads either,
so SwissStop E combines the disadvantages
of both resin and metal pads.
So why am I using them? It's because
SRAM's OEM pure-spec road parts distributor in Japan
had a long-term shortage of SRAM's OEM pads,
and to secure stock for customer repairs at the shop,
I looked for aftermarket alternatives.
Brands like Ashima and PSB
seemed impossible to find
(they exist but the distributor doesn't stock them?),
so when I found SwissStop 35RS in stock once at the distributor
I bought one of those, plus five of the 35E.
Now both SRAM OEM and SwissStop are in stock at the distributor.
↑These are the 35E pads I removed after riding Senbayama.
The imprint of the SRAM brake piston shape
is burned into the backing plate,
and the rear side that receives heat from the rotor first
is scorched.
↑The bottom image is the pad scorched at Kankakei.
The temperature at Kankakei Skyline was lower
than on the old road at Senbayama.
And both these pads show uneven wear.
When you hear "uneven wear," you might imagine
brake caliper misalignment against the rotor
causing front-to-back wear patterns to be reversed left-to-right,
but that's not what's happening here.
I aligned the left and right brake pads.
The unscorched side on the image left is the front of the brake.
↑Kankakei pads
↑Senbayama pads
The rear side of both pads, which receives brake heat first,
shows wear.
Since SRAM pads don't have left/right distinction,
if the rear side still has decent material left,
should I swap the left and right pads at some point?
In an earlier Crank Brothers article (→here)
I wrote: "With fixed-position road cleats,
I only apply a slight angle to my right foot,
but with Crank Brothers pedals and their so-called 0° float cleats,
the oscillation is so large that this adjustment isn't necessary."
But after changing from plastic shims to stainless steel shoe shields
between the cleats and shoes,
I had to reconsider that view.
After switching to the shoe shield,
I could clearly feel "the sensation of returning
to the center of a slight range of motion"
(shown by the red line in the image above).
With the plastic shim, this sensation was vague,
so I thought "as long as there's a sensation of straight
somewhere in the range of motion, there's no problem."
But with the shoe shield,
when I relax my foot—not my right foot which I usually angle
with fixed cleats, but my left—
I can now feel my heel tilting outward at the
oscillation's neutral position.
Whether this is because my left foot is actually twisted,
or because the left shoe's cleat setting
is slightly angled when it should be straight,
the latter is likely the main issue.
(My right foot has confirmed asymmetry.)
Adjusting very slightly to turn the heel inward
brought the oscillation center and my sense of straight into alignment.
As I wrote before,
the shoe shield really is essential.
After finishing cleat setup,
I installed set screws only in the two holes
on the rear of the pedal.
The OEM piece included was 5mm,
and the long bolt available separately is 10mm,
but the actual pieces are M4 socket head cap screws,
so I installed 12mm stainless steel versions from an aftermarket source,
coating the threads with threadlocker.
In an earlier article I considered making them protrude fully,
but even at 12mm they sit slightly recessed in the threaded hole.
By adjusting this depth,
I achieved the road pedal fixed-cleat level
of so-called 0° float feel.
I purchased a Crank Brothers cleat tool.
When mounted on the shoe,
it's convenient for preventing cleat rotation
and making subtle adjustments to fore-aft position,
but it doesn't prevent the shoe shield from rotating,
so it's not that useful for that.
On the side of the tool is a protrusion that measures
the height of the shoe's outsole next to the cleat hole,
with dots numbered 1 through 4.
Ideally measurement should be right next to the cleat hole,
but since I already have the shoe shield installed,
I measured a bit forward of the cleat.
With the single-dot protrusion there's a gap
between the tool and the outsole.
With the two-dot protrusion the tool and outsole
come into light contact.
With three dots there's a gap larger than with the single dot.
I know what you're thinking—
"Wait, why is the result backwards?"—
and you'd be right. The heights of the four protrusions
aren't in dot-count order.
It's not honorable to reveal this, but
the protrusion heights I measured are:
1 dot: 7mm
2 dots: 6.4mm
3 dots: 7.6mm
4 dots: 8.8mm
There are correspondence tables for cleat shims
and traction pads, which when written out become
For Eggbeaters, the appropriate setting is 3 dots,
and for Mallets E, it's 1 dot
with the cleats mounted directly.
When there's a gap between the outsole and the tool,
you can close it by either moving toward the pedal
or toward the shoe. Regarding the pedal side's approach,
the traction pad thickness works like this:
↑It works out this way.
I initially found this table puzzling:
with Eggbeaters the dot numbers decrease as traction pads are added,
but with Mallet E it's the opposite.
Plus, I thought the traction pad thicknesses for Eggbeater
might be backwards.
But the real issue is that the tool's dots
don't increase in height in numbered order,
which makes the table confusing.
So let me swap dots 1 and 2 in the table:
↑It now makes sense.
I should also note that Candy and Mallet models
come with a 1mm traction pad already installed on the pedal.
Double Shot is a model with Mallet on one side
and a flat pedal on the other.
Eggbeater comes with no traction pad initially,
so within this table's range, traction pads are
added going upward: 0mm, 1mm, 2mm.
Eggbeater traction pads mount in the area shown above,
but only the lowest-end Eggbeater 1 doesn't support them—
only the 2, 3, and 11 models do.
And while there are two Crank Brothers distributors in Japan,
one only stocks 1mm thick traction pads,
and the other doesn't stock Eggbeater traction pads at all.
There's no way to get the 2mm thick Eggbeater pads
through official distribution channels.
Finally, for the shoe-side adjustment,
I'll add information about raising height with cleat shims.
This has mysteries too:
↑The plastic shim included with the pedal—
I've shot each at different angles in the image above—
but when two shims are supposedly appropriate,
it's unclear if you can stack them together.
Plus, this shim is sold by one distributor
as a 2-piece set for 250 yen (tax included),
but the other distributor doesn't carry it at all.
And separately from this shim, there's
↑Image courtesy of the distributor
the MATCH shoe shim,
which has a shape that clearly can't be stacked,
with black at 1mm thick
and the gray in the image at 1.5mm thick.
The Crank Brothers cleat tool is officially called
the "Cleat Tool Grey V2,"
suggesting it's version 2,
while a version 1 exists in a different color,
and the reference tables might still be based on V1...
There may be something like that going on.
In my shoe's case, I didn't measure directly at the cleat position,
but according to the 2-dot setting,
the appropriate spec is 2mm traction pad.
Against that,
I'm using the original 1mm traction pad.
If I switched to 2mm, the friction would increase
and probably reduce that nice center-return sensation
I used to get without the set screws,
but I've achieved essentially fixed feel with the screw depth adjustment,
so the cleat tool is best treated as just a reference.
There are combinations like the 2mm Eggbeater pads
that you can't get anyway.
I've made lacquer paint formulations matched to my Niner frame color
as closely as possible, and I used this to paint a Cat Eye bell.
But as you see in the image above, painting the whole thing
makes the bell ring terribly,
and on the first day I went to Shodoshima.
I'll write about the things I noticed
and what happened while I was there.
This is the parking lot at the summit of Kankakei Gorge.
Although it's called the summit, it's not actually the highest elevation—
depending on the route,
the elevation drops about 100 meters from the top of the climb.
There are roughly four routes:
the South Route (Blue Line) climbing from Kusaki (Prefectural Route 29),
the East Route from Fukuda Port (Prefectural Route 246,
which merges with the Blue Line partway),
the North Route from Prefectural Route 31,
and the West Route starting slightly north of Tonosho Port
(Prefectural Route 27 / Kankakei Skyline).
Since my route was in at Sakaide Port and out at Tonosho Port,
I couldn't leave my gear in coin lockers at the ports,
so I carried Campagnolo's large backpack
the whole time.
The route names I mentioned earlier aren't official—
I'm just calling them that myself—
but I climbed Kankakei via the East Route
and descended via the West Route.
The West Route, the Kankakei Skyline,
has steep grades where speed builds up easily, and
I didn't have time to take photos,
so this is from Google Maps,
but these emergency refuge areas are set up.
They're sand and soil embankments designed to stop vehicles
if the brakes overheat and fail,
but because the road surface is formed in a wave-like pattern,
if you actually enter one at the speeds necessary,
the car will likely be damaged.
With modern cars having better brake performance,
this facility is pretty much unnecessary anymore.
Not long ago I rode up a place called Senbayama
from Aridagawa in Wakayama,
climbing switchbacks.
It's apparently called the "Wakayama Alpe d'Huez,"
but on the way back I didn't take the same road—
I went to the summit of Senbayama
(there's nothing there except a small shelter)
and then I went to the summit of Washigamine,
then descended an old road with rough pavement and narrow width.
That's where my front brake started to fade,
and the braking power dropped dramatically.
From that terror, I seriously considered whether
maybe road bikes actually do need a rear brake—
I was really reconsidering my position.
The disc rotor turned a copper color,
and judging from the color, the surface temperature
was definitely over 200°C.
Later when I checked the data,
the descent gradient averaged -13%,
with a maximum of -21%.
After the fade occurred once,
the piston didn't return cleanly,
and whether on Senbayama or Kankakei,
from then on the brake pads continuously
rubbed against the disc rotor with a scratching sound.
On Shodoshima the next day I rode a bit over 200 km,
and they kept rubbing the whole time.
If I lift the front wheel and spin it by hand
it stops after just over one rotation,
but when actually riding I can't really feel it—
just hear the noise—so I didn't fix it out there.
↑This is SwissStop 35E brake pads,
currently spec for SRAM road bikes.
The numbers indicate the shape—
for example, Shimano road pads would be 34,
and Campagnolo would be 30.
The E means the backing plate is silver,
while there's also RS with a yellow backing plate.
According to Japanese distributors,
E uses resin material, is high-durability,
gentle on rotors, and produces low noise—
but this is completely false.
First, the resin pads lack the characteristic
feeling of strong initial bite,
what's called "initial bite."
Also, if the disc rotor is wet,
you get quite a loud screeching sound.
SRAM calls resin pads "organic"
and metal pads "sintered,"
and they tell you not to use organic pads
on rotors that were previously used with sintered pads.
I use the term "contaminated,"
because sintered-contaminated rotors
will produce less noise than sintered in the rain,
but still quite loud.
SwissStop E lacks the strong initial bite feel,
produces loud noise in the rain if the rotor is wet
(better than SRAM sintered, but still loud),
and I've confirmed that contamination occurs on rotors,
so in terms of characteristics it's a metal-type pad.
On top of that, metal pads' advantage of providing
better stopping power deep in the lever pull
than resin pads—that's missing.
And it doesn't wear slowly like metal pads either,
so SwissStop E combines the disadvantages
of both resin and metal pads.
So why am I using them? It's because
SRAM's OEM pure-spec road parts distributor in Japan
had a long-term shortage of SRAM's OEM pads,
and to secure stock for customer repairs at the shop,
I looked for aftermarket alternatives.
Brands like Ashima and PSB
seemed impossible to find
(they exist but the distributor doesn't stock them?),
so when I found SwissStop 35RS in stock once at the distributor
I bought one of those, plus five of the 35E.
Now both SRAM OEM and SwissStop are in stock at the distributor.
↑These are the 35E pads I removed after riding Senbayama.
The imprint of the SRAM brake piston shape
is burned into the backing plate,
and the rear side that receives heat from the rotor first
is scorched.
↑The bottom image is the pad scorched at Kankakei.
The temperature at Kankakei Skyline was lower
than on the old road at Senbayama.
And both these pads show uneven wear.
When you hear "uneven wear," you might imagine
brake caliper misalignment against the rotor
causing front-to-back wear patterns to be reversed left-to-right,
but that's not what's happening here.
I aligned the left and right brake pads.
The unscorched side on the image left is the front of the brake.
↑Kankakei pads
↑Senbayama pads
The rear side of both pads, which receives brake heat first,
shows wear.
Since SRAM pads don't have left/right distinction,
if the rear side still has decent material left,
should I swap the left and right pads at some point?
In an earlier Crank Brothers article (→here)
I wrote: "With fixed-position road cleats,
I only apply a slight angle to my right foot,
but with Crank Brothers pedals and their so-called 0° float cleats,
the oscillation is so large that this adjustment isn't necessary."
But after changing from plastic shims to stainless steel shoe shields
between the cleats and shoes,
I had to reconsider that view.
After switching to the shoe shield,
I could clearly feel "the sensation of returning
to the center of a slight range of motion"
(shown by the red line in the image above).
With the plastic shim, this sensation was vague,
so I thought "as long as there's a sensation of straight
somewhere in the range of motion, there's no problem."
But with the shoe shield,
when I relax my foot—not my right foot which I usually angle
with fixed cleats, but my left—
I can now feel my heel tilting outward at the
oscillation's neutral position.
Whether this is because my left foot is actually twisted,
or because the left shoe's cleat setting
is slightly angled when it should be straight,
the latter is likely the main issue.
(My right foot has confirmed asymmetry.)
Adjusting very slightly to turn the heel inward
brought the oscillation center and my sense of straight into alignment.
As I wrote before,
the shoe shield really is essential.
After finishing cleat setup,
I installed set screws only in the two holes
on the rear of the pedal.
The OEM piece included was 5mm,
and the long bolt available separately is 10mm,
but the actual pieces are M4 socket head cap screws,
so I installed 12mm stainless steel versions from an aftermarket source,
coating the threads with threadlocker.
In an earlier article I considered making them protrude fully,
but even at 12mm they sit slightly recessed in the threaded hole.
By adjusting this depth,
I achieved the road pedal fixed-cleat level
of so-called 0° float feel.
I purchased a Crank Brothers cleat tool.
When mounted on the shoe,
it's convenient for preventing cleat rotation
and making subtle adjustments to fore-aft position,
but it doesn't prevent the shoe shield from rotating,
so it's not that useful for that.
On the side of the tool is a protrusion that measures
the height of the shoe's outsole next to the cleat hole,
with dots numbered 1 through 4.
Ideally measurement should be right next to the cleat hole,
but since I already have the shoe shield installed,
I measured a bit forward of the cleat.
With the single-dot protrusion there's a gap
between the tool and the outsole.
With the two-dot protrusion the tool and outsole
come into light contact.
With three dots there's a gap larger than with the single dot.
I know what you're thinking—
"Wait, why is the result backwards?"—
and you'd be right. The heights of the four protrusions
aren't in dot-count order.
It's not honorable to reveal this, but
the protrusion heights I measured are:
1 dot: 7mm
2 dots: 6.4mm
3 dots: 7.6mm
4 dots: 8.8mm
There are correspondence tables for cleat shims
and traction pads, which when written out become
For Eggbeaters, the appropriate setting is 3 dots,
and for Mallets E, it's 1 dot
with the cleats mounted directly.
When there's a gap between the outsole and the tool,
you can close it by either moving toward the pedal
or toward the shoe. Regarding the pedal side's approach,
the traction pad thickness works like this:
↑It works out this way.
I initially found this table puzzling:
with Eggbeaters the dot numbers decrease as traction pads are added,
but with Mallet E it's the opposite.
Plus, I thought the traction pad thicknesses for Eggbeater
might be backwards.
But the real issue is that the tool's dots
don't increase in height in numbered order,
which makes the table confusing.
So let me swap dots 1 and 2 in the table:
↑It now makes sense.
I should also note that Candy and Mallet models
come with a 1mm traction pad already installed on the pedal.
Double Shot is a model with Mallet on one side
and a flat pedal on the other.
Eggbeater comes with no traction pad initially,
so within this table's range, traction pads are
added going upward: 0mm, 1mm, 2mm.
Eggbeater traction pads mount in the area shown above,
but only the lowest-end Eggbeater 1 doesn't support them—
only the 2, 3, and 11 models do.
And while there are two Crank Brothers distributors in Japan,
one only stocks 1mm thick traction pads,
and the other doesn't stock Eggbeater traction pads at all.
There's no way to get the 2mm thick Eggbeater pads
through official distribution channels.
Finally, for the shoe-side adjustment,
I'll add information about raising height with cleat shims.
This has mysteries too:
↑The plastic shim included with the pedal—
I've shot each at different angles in the image above—
but when two shims are supposedly appropriate,
it's unclear if you can stack them together.
Plus, this shim is sold by one distributor
as a 2-piece set for 250 yen (tax included),
but the other distributor doesn't carry it at all.
And separately from this shim, there's
↑Image courtesy of the distributor
the MATCH shoe shim,
which has a shape that clearly can't be stacked,
with black at 1mm thick
and the gray in the image at 1.5mm thick.
The Crank Brothers cleat tool is officially called
the "Cleat Tool Grey V2,"
suggesting it's version 2,
while a version 1 exists in a different color,
and the reference tables might still be based on V1...
There may be something like that going on.
In my shoe's case, I didn't measure directly at the cleat position,
but according to the 2-dot setting,
the appropriate spec is 2mm traction pad.
Against that,
I'm using the original 1mm traction pad.
If I switched to 2mm, the friction would increase
and probably reduce that nice center-return sensation
I used to get without the set screws,
but I've achieved essentially fixed feel with the screw depth adjustment,
so the cleat tool is best treated as just a reference.
There are combinations like the 2mm Eggbeater pads
that you can't get anyway.
I've made lacquer paint formulations matched to my Niner frame color
as closely as possible, and I used this to paint a Cat Eye bell.
But as you see in the image above, painting the whole thing
makes the bell ring terribly,
Products Mentioned in This Article
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Original Japanese post: のむラボ日記 #7719