Choosing brake pads
The pad is the cheapest part of the braking system and the one that decides everything. Three families of friction material exist, and the choice is made on use, not on price.
Organic, sintered, ceramic: what changes
Organic material bites gently, spares the discs and stays quiet, but fades as temperature climbs. Sintered material, made of hot-pressed metal, keeps its bite in the wet and when hot, at the cost of faster disc wear. Ceramic sits quietly in between, with little dust and a progressive feel.
A material for each use
For town riding and short trips, organic is enough and costs less per kilometre. For fast road work, mountains, two-up loaded riding or the track, sintered is the only sensible choice. Off-road, sintered wins too: mud turns organic material into paste in a single outing.
Front and rear do not do the same work
The front provides most of the deceleration and works hot; the rear mainly stabilises and meters. Fitting a very aggressive material at the rear makes the wheel easy to lock, which is unsettling mid-corner. Many riders run sintered at the front and keep organic at the rear, and that is not a misplaced economy.
Check wear before ordering
Pads are replaced before the friction material reaches one millimetre, backing plate excluded. Take the chance to measure disc thickness and compare it with the minimum figure engraved on its edge: new pads on an out-of-spec disc do not restore braking. Check whether wear is even too — tapered wear points to a seized caliper.
Bedding in over the first hundred kilometres
A new pad does not yet match the disc: its real contact area is small and its bite deceptive. Make about ten progressive stops from a moderate speed, letting things cool between each, and avoid any emergency braking for the first hundred kilometres. Skipping this glazes the material and leaves permanently poor braking.
These guides give general bearings. They do not replace your machine's workshop manual, which alone gives exact torque figures and wear limits.
The essentials in three points
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