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Just bought a used bike- it's great, but needed new brake pads. Got new brake pads and now the tire is rubbing on the brake arm. I do not understand! The front brake is with new brake pads is the same make/model and is amazing in every way. Is there a solution to thin? Is there something about brakes I don't know??? The tire is 700c x 25mm
2005 Trek 1500 WSD
It looks like your new brake pads have pushed the right brake arm out moving the top of the arm down, touching the tire. You need the top of the brake arm to move up and give you some clearance.
Options
Hopefully all you need to do is remove some washers.
If you was to remove the pads would you get sufficient clearance on the centre?
If so get thinner but longer pad blocks.
They look to be a fairly chunky pad block but it could be the angle of the image playing with my eyes.
I have a 28mm tyre on a bike that should max out at 25mm. Its a really close fit, and I have a similar problem to you when the brake quick release is open - namely when the brake pads are further apart, your brake arms are wider and the metal up near the pivot point is in a different place.
In your case the new unworn pads are thicker and pushing the arms apart, eating up the last millimetres of clearance.
The proper fix would be to put a smaller tyre on, but that's annoying.
In my case I ended up filing the center of my brand new tyre where the mold join lines were, which gave more clearance.
In your case, look at your brake pads and see if you can swap around or remove some washers. The Drive Side brake pad holder seems different height to the left one, but that could be an artefact of the carpet pattern in the background.
Another option is to add some wear to the brake pads with a file, to provide a little more clearance. You might want to buy some thinner low-profile pads for the back wheel and save those ones for the front wheel where you're not having any problems.
In relation to David D.'s answer and Daniel R. Hick's comment, it's most likely both.
If your dropouts look like this:
The tyre size is too big, but the old, thin pads made it look and feel like it fitted.
It's either you slice your newly bought brake pads thin and be done with it or think long-term and replace it with an actually proper-fitting tyre.
BUT,
if your dropouts are the horizontal/angled/adjustable ones, like these:
then you might wanna adjust your wheel axle to the back just a bit.
Did you remove the wheel to install the new brake pads? Maybe now the wheel is in a different position.
To correct this, the wheel needs to be pushed slightly down, while closing the skewer lever. Just check that the nut is not massively out of the dropout.
