quick brake pad poll
 

I’m sure this as being done to death, but I’m getting my VTR superhawk (firestorm over here in the UK) ready for the summer and one of the things I didn’t like about it last year were the brakes, I recognize it’s a well known weakness but the initial ‘bite’ is very poor, the bike is currently fitted with Kyoto pads which I think are the root of the problem they appear to be cheap ebay junk, so my question is which aftermarket pads will improve the initial bite and give me strong overall performance ? or would I just be better fitting Honda OEM?
so lets have a quick poll of brake pads what's hot and what's not :rolleyes:

BTW the bike is getting new fluid and braided hoses and will be running on Pireli Diablo super corsas.

Well if you have stock calipers I like the EBC HH pads. I have RC51 pots on mine and for those I use Versha RJLs as there are one of the best pads I have used but I don't think they make them for the stock calipers.

thanks for the reply, yes it's on stock calipers and it seems the range of pads available is limited for that caliper, is the RC51 caliper a direct swop? I have a spare set of Alcon six pots but don't really want to go to the trouble of fitting them to the stock forks which are less than perfect themselves.
I think a set of EBC HH may be the way improve the situation in the short term till I decide on a more involved solution that considers the brakes and suspension as a whole.

I checked the Vesrah website and they do not make RJL pads for
the stock calipers.
I'm running the six-pot calipers from an '01-'02 GSXR 1000 with Vesrah pads and they really do work well.

OEM calipers, EBC HH
All other commonly swapped calipers. Versha RJLs

it's been said the Vesrah RJL compound is not available for the VTRs OE caliper, but according to this they are, see link

http://www.vesrah.com/jpn/new_page_29.htm

I'll check with the UK Versah supplier to see if part no VD-154 RJL is indeed the racing / road compound in the correct pad shape.

yep ,
i found the way the brake and fork work together is shit , its the worst thing about the hawk / firestorm ,
i rebuilt both , and it was still total shit ..
i fitted an r1 frontend to my daily ride and a cbr1000r frontend to my other storm ,
i wrok on bikes a lot , but on the other hand i did work as a courier where milage ./ disc wear is important .

its no good sayin hh pads afre great if they wear out discs / (rotors) discs are expensive


the short version of what im saying is sbs pads are the best , (in my lowly opinion) i use them in all my bikes . ebc are fuking junk , i wore out a set of rear in four weeks street riding and having worked on bikes for my job are the only pads that many times when i removed calipers the pad had removed from the backplate !!!!

sbs 100percent uk available , have no idea in the states

sbs are certainly well thought of by the people who use them, EBC seem to illicit either very positive or very negative responses it seems like you either love’em or hate’em, myself I’ve never used them on a bike but poor experiences with car pads in the past as left me a bit reluctant to go the EBC route despite often glowing reports, but apparently their new Blue stuff road/race car pad is exceptional and EBC have made a lot of progress in the last few years, this appears to be borne out by the bike users who have good things to say but not so by those who still hate, so what's the truth? to be honest braking can be subjective and as one of the biggest suppliers EBC are going to generate more opinion than other makes and it's often the case that the less happy shout loudest and that there is a silent majoity quietly getting on with using EBC pads with no issues.

I probably wouldn’t be exploring the options quite as much if it wasn’t for the fact I’m not using the bike at present, but getting it ready for April when I will be using it, I’ve got a couple of weeks to decide on the best option for, whatever I fit as got to be better than the truly awful ones that are in there now.

I just installed my 2nd set of EBC HH front pads last week. My calipers and rotors are stock, and the EBC's work great for me. Big improvement over stock.

Hmmm...I went to the Vesrah website and filled in the mini questionnaire. It came back "No Matches".

That would be great if they are available. I bought my RJL's at kurveygirl.com and no, it's not porn.

Still on my first set of EBC HH. Put them on two seasons ago. As others have said, night and day from the OEM. Like them a lot much better initial bite

The listing is for an RVT1000R. Isn't that an RC51? Which means that the pads won't fit a $uperhawk.

I have perused this and some other bike forums and overall the Vesrah RJL pads get good reviews. There is some conflicting info on the warm-up when used for the street. What say the experts here on that issue. 8541Hawk?
I'm a novice rider so I want a pad that is consistent in feel, hot or cold.
Has any one tried these.Spiegler Performance Parts - Carbone Lorraine | Brake Pads
These also have received mostly excellent reviews.
I'm going to install 954 calipers and SS lines so I will have the option to go with just about any pad available.

check the chart again, the second pad listed VD-154 RJl (4) is for the CB1300 and VTR1000F (Firestorm/Superhawk) whether it's actually available is a different matter, the list may not be current, I've yet source ant in the UK.

As you are in the UK, perhaps you want to also look at Zcoo pads. They apparently are top-notch stuff (don`t think anyone carries them here in North America). They come from Japan and one of the chaps on Speedzilla raves about them.

your research is correct often track / race oriented pads do have warm up issues as they are designed to give optimum performance within in a specific heat range, the more race focused the pad the narrower the operating range, generally within their operating range they give a high coefficient of friction, high resistance to fade and gerenrally excellant performance, on the down side they tend not to work consistently until this operating temp is reached, on a track this isn’t a problem as your constantly on and off the brakes maintaining temps but for street riding, say on the highway it’s easy to go a long while without touching the brakes this allows them to cool so your next application will be on cool pads which may not give the stopping power you would expect or desire.
OE and street oriented pads are designed to work in a much wider range of operating conditions temps, making them much more consistent more of the time.
It’s often tempting to fit ‘race’ everything (tyres, brake pads etc) in the belief that this will lead to improved performance but often the reverse is true unless these products are working at their optimum temp their performance will often be inferior to OE.
As a novice rider you may be wise to consider the type of riding your going to be doing and choose accordingly, OE or HH pads are probably your best bet.

these aren't a pad I'm familiar with, I'll have a look and see if they are available here in the UK.

Thanks, I see it now.

OK I've just got off the phone to a Vesrah agent here in the UK and the RJL compound is available for the OE caliper part# VD-154 RJL, however they aren't cheap, in fact they are down right expensive at £60 per pair, that's right £60 for a pair £120 for both front calipers which is way to expensive IMHO, to put the price in context I can get SBS HS sinter pads for £30 for both calipers!!! that price include tax and delivery, I accept the Vesrah are good pads but surely not enough to justify costing 4x as much as SBS which are also a pretty good pad, another potential problem is the Vesrah are a race oriented pad and unless you are running on the track most of the time they may be to compromised for road use.

The following list and general info is what I’ve come up with in the week or so I’ve been looking at aftermarket brake pads and this is by no means an exhaustive list and is based solely on feedback received from this forum plus vtr1000.org (smaller UK equivalent to the Superhawk forum) and also Pistonheads.com a largely car oriented UK site that dies have a large bike input.

Vesrah RJL, pros: available for OE calliper, great reputation and feedback from users, cons: very expensive and perhaps to track focused for a bike used predominantly on the road.

EBC HH, pros: widely available, good value for money, good reports from some users, cons: user reports can be a mixed bag, some users stating that their performance deteriorates with use, they also illicit the most extreme negative comments, ie ‘these pads are s%*t’ and comments of that nature, I can’t really explain this apart from to say that they are probably the most widely used of all the pads and therefore the largest opinion grouping, meaning more opinions are registered which leads to some less than analytical comments, in nearly all cases these kind of comments were not backed up with any reasons, so whilst I’m not condemning EBC based on perhaps spurious comments, anything that divides opinion in such a way can’t be ignored.

SBS HS Sinter, pros: available for OE calliper, excellent reports from users, very good value for money, cons: not the most commonly used so the user base is quite small but that’s about it.

Carbone Lorraine, they don’t appear to do their SBK5 or XBK5 compounds for OE calliper.

Performance Friction, also don’t appear to do a HH / sintered type pad for the OE calliper.

Bendix Supersport sintered, pros; available for OE calliper, very positive feedback from users, good value, cons: limited feedback available.

Brembo SA sintered, available for OE calliper, mid priced but surprisingly I’ve had no feedback on these at all.

It appears looking at the above list that the OE calliper is not very well represented by all the manufacturers, this limits the pad choice it you require a track/race oriented pad so for ultimate performance then a calliper change is probably the way to go, but the objective of this thread was to look at aftermarket alternatives to the OE pads in the OE calliper and help me choose a replacement for the frankly shocking Kyoto pads currently fitted.

Now I fully realise that this exercise is totally based on anecdotal evidence from people who have no formal experience in product testing, but the opinions of other (similar) users as helped me decide on the SBS HS pad, this is almost certainly not the choice I would have made without the feedback, I would probably have taken the obvious route and fitted EBC HH or even ignored the aftermarket completely and opted for OE.
Whether this choice will prove to be wise or not only time will tell and I’ll post my initial verdict on the SBS pads once they are fitted, but whatever the outcome I will have made a more informed decision than if I’d simply plumped for the most popular EBC option, plus I hope the info is useful to anyone else looking at the myriad of pads out their.

Replacing pads for the first time and I'm having a brake pad WTF???
See the attached pic with REAR EBC HH laying on top of the stock pad....I could have sworn I ordered the right part #....anyone else have this problem or did I brain cramp the order? Rear pad part # is FA436HH.

I have the pads to replace the front FA187HH but haven't opened them yet.
Thanks!

Mistake, the rear is the FA174HH. Did mine earlier in the season, worked good.