Sintered Brake Pads

[Bob_Roller]

Just had the front tire replaced on the oilhead last week, when I removed the calipers, I took a look at the pads, they were worn past the wear groove in the pad material, they needed replacing long before now !!! .

Looked at OEM pads, as they work great for me, until I saw the price, 1 set, that's for 1 caliper, $90US .

Found EBC sintered pads for $33 a set at Bike bandit, ordered them Monday, got them Friday .

I'll be installing them tomorrow morning .

I just got to thinking about using sintered pads on stainless rotors, the OEM pads are sintered material as well and the rotors are stainless on the oilhead .

At 50,000 miles on the oilhead, I just measured the rotor thickness and it's about half way worn between new  and minimum  thickness  .

I was under the imperssion that using sintered pads on stainless rotors was not a good idea .

My '82 LS came to me with sintered pads on OEM rotors and the rotor surfaces were torn up pretty good, so I put the rebuilt rotors from Speigler Performance off on my '84 LS, using EBC FA18 pads and seems to work well .

So it's quite obvious that sintered pads can be used on stainless rotors .

Anyone have any experiences to share about using sintered pads on the R65

[nhmaf]

I've seen sintered pads on SS rotors, and the results were not pretty - now, *maybe* there were other extenuating factors involved, but others have also told me that mixing the two was generally not a good idea.  Like other applications where metal-on-metal contact occurs - having two potential hard-surfaced metallic particles coming together where you want high friction and long parts life to occur may be at cross purposes.   I've only got about 27K on my bike at this time, but the rotors are very nearly at the original specs and have almost negligible wear/grooving.   If using softer surfaced rotors, such as cast iron or non-stainless, it is generally accepted, I think, that the rotors will wear faster and the overall wear amount is a tradeoff between pads and rotors based on the selection of nonmetallic vs sintered metal pads.   Of course, I could be wrong in all this, but that is my theory.  I also think that the hole patterns in the OEM rotors do tend to exacerbate the possibility of increased and/or uneven wear with the hard, sintered pads.

I did not think that the OEM pads were sintered metal - I'm sure that they weren't back in 1981 when my bike was built.   I have very good performance with the organic FA18 pads which are reasonable, price wise and plan to keep using them with my SS rotors - though if I got other aftermarket rotors, I might change to sintered pads if the rotors permitted their use.

[Bob_Roller]

I've got about 50 miles on the EBC pads on my oilhead .

What difference in braking power over the OEM pads .

Don't know how they work on other bikes, but this was very good upgrade for a third the cost of OEM parts, now to see how long the pads last and if they are more abusive to the rotors .

Have about 200 miles on a new Michelin Road Pilot 4 front tire, feel alot better than the Road Pilot 2 that was on there before, but again, lets see how long it lasts !!!!

[nhmaf]

Everyone I've talked to running the road pilots have been quite pleased with their longevity and handling.  I was going to try some on my Kawi concours, but they aren't quite the right size - it has a somewhat uncommon front wheel size