There's a lot of Brake information here:
1300 brakes
In that list I did a step by step on cleaning the rear caliper, pretty similar with the fronts.
"How to" replace front brake pads ST1300 ?
- Thread starter STill STylin
- Start date
In that list I did a step by step on cleaning the rear caliper, pretty similar with the fronts.
- Joined
- Mar 18, 2006
- Messages
- 2,826
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- 70
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- Ilkley, W Yorkshire, UK
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- 2013 ST1300 A9
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I couldn't disagree more.
Article [13] - ST1300 Maintenance - Brakes- Avoiding the Pitfalls | ST1300 Articles
A close hands-on look at the Honda ST1300 braking system. These are personal observations about the things that can go wrong, why they go wrong and what can be done to keep things working sweetly. Updated April 2020 and to address more recent observations, to include information about the SMC...
The original poster has a 2005 model, and the front brakes are a similar design to the rear. All of that us covered in the above link. Download the pdf in post #1.
Front brake specific information is also covered in the opening photos, page 5 and page 10. Throughout, although most photos are of a rear caliper, mention of things like heat shield pads, and the difference in the pad design front/rear and in the chromed clip on the caliper bracket, give a pretty good picture of all of the brake calipers and pads. Especially for the multitude of reasons for the calipers not returning.
eg to name just a few.
- badly fitting pads,
- bent tags on pad spring
- pad spring installed the wrong way round
- wrong chrome retainer clips installed front/rear
- SMC faulty / badly maintained
- Slider pins corroded
- Slider pins installed cross threaded
- Pad pins rough
- Too much grease on slider pins
- Pad installed on wring side of pad spring tags
- Caliper not mated with both slider pins
- Pad not installed properly in retainer clip
- retainer clip not glued into position (with correct glue)
- Rider error, big boots on brake pedal.
- Non OEM pads used
Not one single person? My brakes get thoroughly cleaned and inspected at least every tyre change. Thats 5000 miles, 6-9 months.
No comments about this ?? Check out the link and the various other brake related articles.
I tested a pair of ebc's on the rear of my '04, a change or two ago. I found no difference in performance, compared to oem, on the rear. A couple of notes are, I did swap in the white heat insulator off the oem pads, into the ebc pads. And, I did verify that the pad thickness was virtually the same between the ebc HH pads and the oem rear pad. And yes, I did verify that the oem pads that I compared for thickness were the correct number for a rear installation. I know that some posters have found that their new oem rear pads are thicker than the oem fronts, but I have not yet found that to be the case. Performance wise,,, the ebc HH's matched the oem pads on the rear installation and ran for equivalent mileage. Have never run a couple of pairs of ebc HH's on the front,,,, except when I got the bike a dealer used by the p/o had done poor installations of a pair of front ebc's,, and the fronts were dragging like crazy. All the pistons,, front and back were full of corruption,,, no cleaning,, just jammed them back in and go. Great operating brakes depends on the details,, cheers,,, CAt'
So the difference in pad thickness is not due to the friction material. That material is the same within manufacturing tolerance (approx .010"). We are only talking about the difference in thickness being due to the white thermal barrier (heat guard). I only checked the friction materials on each with the depth probe on my digital vernier. So the similar rear brake life between oem and ebc is explained. thx, CAt'
No, the pad material is two different thickness.
Which is another reason folks should not try to use the white spacer with aftermarket pads.
Attachments
I can vouch for this. When I bought my 1999 VFR800 about2 years back I was underwhelmed by the front brakes but they felt much better after cleaning the pistons. I did not, however, check the sliding pins. I decided to swap out the stock pads for EBC HH a few weeks back and discovered to my surprise that the right caliper slides were seized solid (although the left side were nice and slidey). I went ahead and replaced the pads and fixed up the sliding pins, and the brakes went from "meh" to "woah". I suspect that simply fixing the slide pins would have given me a great boost in brake power.