I've been enjoying my winter cycling for a while now. Worked out a maintenance routine of oiling everything, checking the chain, washing off my bike after every long ride to get rid of salt, cleaning the rims off . . .
The most annoying part of the routine though is having to remove and clean off the brake pads at least once a week. Is there any way around it, or anything I can do to delay doing this? It becomes rather miserable to be fiddling around in my cold garage with gloveless hands to do the brake adjustments all winter.
The brake pads seem to be coated with enough crap (oil/grit/bits of metal) that need to be sanded off that they won't stop the bike at all after a week. The brake makes plenty of contact with the rim, but it feels like pushing a piece of glass into a piece of glass - no traction. It always happens on the front brake first (maybe because I use the front brake about 95% of the time). Any ideas, or is this just the nature of winter riding? The brake pads themselves have plenty of wear left, and always work fine once I file down the top layer of crud.