Question about brakes....

I just rebled my front brakes and noticed my new pads are only contacting the rotors with the bottom 3/8". Is this normal on new pads? The brakes seem exceedingly weak (hence the rebleeding).

As a side note, I used "speed bleeders" for the first time on this project.
They are awesome, highly recommended.

Nachoman

 

new pads always need about 50-75 miles of brake in time. Untill then....

 

It's called bedding in - as Foximus stated it takes some time to get the pad to shape to fit the rotor.

You can speed this up by doing several firm stops in an empty parking lot. Nice long firm stops from a decent speed. Ride about to cool them down, stop, ride about, stop. Repeat a few times.

Hang on and I'll look for Jim's bed in technique for his race bike.

hrm not it - this is for car brakes but it is the same idea...
http://www.pagidusa.com/bedding_in_procedure.htm

and

http://www.raceshopper.com/tech.shtml

 

EBC recommends a minimum 200 miles for bed-in. They also suggest taking it easy and avoiding riding in heavy traffic for the duration. Got new pads for the FZR on the way. Gonna have to go through it all myself shortly. Does anyone happen to know how to make your own cables or someone who can? I'm not willing to spring the $120 for the new cables on the exhaust valve for the FZR.

 

you can use a fine grit sand paper on your rotors in a straight but multi directional pattern, to help with pad wear in. This is done to all rotors after machining. (or SHOULD be done, if the shop is good)

 

I read somewhere on the internet (which means take this with a grain of salt) that new brake pads have a high resin content (the glue that holds pads together) on their new surface.

If you brake too heavily in the first uses, like first 50-100 miles, then it melts that resin layer, and coats the rotor. Wheras if you brake softly, it should chafe that layer off.

Of course, this only applied to a certain type of pads, I think it was the higher end pads.

Just food for thought. This made sense to me when I read it, so I do this when breaking in new pads. Also, I do do hard stops after the first 100 miles or so, just to make sure they are working and to make sure they are bedding in!