I started riding my freewheel unicycle regularly again on 5/9/2022 after a considerable hiatus. One of the first things I did was purchase a new set of brake pads for my Hope Tech E4 brake. What I bought was called “Standard” and I didn’t realize this actually meant the Organic version. Previously I was riding with the Sintered version. From the beginning of riding again I had a number of challenges. Two of those were:
- over-braking enough to cause a UPD
- inability to brake when pedaling speed reached a certain level
On Wednesday, 8/24/2022 my brake hose finally broke and I transferred my wheel into another frame which had another Hope Tech E4 brake. However, the pads on that brake were Sintered instead of Organic. I went on a ride on Friday, 8/26/2022 and found that I had to use a lot more force on the brake lever and as a consequence I had far fewer incidents of over-braking causing a UPD and also was able to pedal at a faster rate over longer distances without braking. Compared to when I used to ride this trail regularly in the past the terrain is now much softer with patches of deep sand and lots of ruts caused by horse hooves. This has made it more challenging to ride but the brake pads issue confounded just how much more (i.e., it turns out a lot of that challenge was not from the terrain difference but from the brake pad difference).
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