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00:00Howdy, this is Lemony with RevZilla TV here to talk to you today about how to change the brakes on your motorcycle
00:09So if you're watching this video my guess is you fall into one of two camps
00:12You might be the rider who has simply worn out their OEM brake pads
00:16And they're looking to replace them so you continue stopping
00:18That's a great reason to replace your brake pads
00:20The smaller subgroup of you may be folks who have some life left in your pad still or maybe you don't doesn't really matter
00:26But you're looking to change your brake pads mostly to get us some different characteristics with respect to braking
00:31You might be looking for something with a little more initial bite or perhaps a pad that dusts a little less regardless
00:36You're looking to change your braking experience and both of those are great reasons in order to in order to change up brake pads
00:42Experiment see what else is out there, and how you can upgrade your factory ride now. You can see here. We're working on buzzsaws Tiger
00:48It's a fairly late model motorcycle now this bike has disc brakes fairly obviously and they are hydraulically operated the process
00:55however of changing brakes can be pretty similar from motorcycle to motorcycle if you're rocking a drum brake or something is mechanically actuated it is going
01:02To be a little bit different for you, but those are few and far between so we're not really concentrating on those styles of brake right now
01:08Now you can see this thing is equipped with a radial caliper if you have conventional mount brakes the process is very similar
01:13But if you want extra deep analysis swing over to our common tread article where we also did a brake job on a conventional mount
01:19brake system as well
01:21Installation on these is really easy throw into your brake pads on your bike is a one bearder on our BSD or beard scale of
01:27Difficulty I'm gonna call it a one beard or maybe plus a side burn
01:30I'll explain that in just a second the actual tools you need are pretty minimal just a couple of hand tools in order to get
01:35This job done. You don't need a lift at all
01:37I've got buzzsaws bike up and lift really just so you guys can see exactly what it is that I'm doing with my hands
01:42Now the reason I mentioned that side burn is that these are brakes even though
01:45This is mechanically simple brakes are important
01:48You need to stop you should be confident in your ability to do a brake job
01:51So if it's something that you're a little bit concerned about have a buddy walk you through it
01:55But if you've got some decent tools, and you're confident that you know what you're doing when it comes to you know
01:59General mechanical knowledge most people should be able to get a brake job done themselves
02:03With a minimum of effort and you should feel pretty confident in your work, so let's get right to things
02:09I'm gonna describe the process a little bit, and then we'll start tearing this bike apart
02:12What we're gonna do is remove the actual caliper itself once we get the caliper off there
02:16We're gonna check out the condition of the pads
02:18We're gonna look at the condition of the rotors, and then we're gonna clean everything up
02:22Just generally clean the parts especially the ones we're gonna be putting back into play from there
02:26We're gonna lubricate a couple of important pieces. We're gonna put the new pads in we're gonna bolt everything back up and there
02:32We're pretty much complete the job really is very simple now before we get started a couple things
02:37I do want to warn you about you'll notice. I'm wearing these goofy gloves
02:40Brake pad material is carcinogenic so the dust that collects on your brakes also carcinogenic protect yourself some of you may even elect to wear a
02:48Respirator the other thing I'm gonna sort of clue you into too is because we're doing a brake job
02:53This is a hydraulic system, so once you have this caliper off
02:56It's really important
02:57You don't hit the brake lever or the brake pedal depending on whether you're working with a front on the front or the rear of
03:02The motorcycle so if that means you have to write yourself a big note or perhaps tell your roommate not to come in the garage
03:07Whatever it takes make sure that once that caliper comes off the bike
03:10You don't hit the brake pedal or the brake lever it could be as serious as requiring a caliper rebuild
03:16Which is no fun especially if you're trying to do just a quick brake job
03:19So let's get cracking on things as of right now the first thing
03:22I want to do is remove this caliper so that I can actually assess the condition of some of the stuff
03:27Inside here, and we can see how Ed's brake system is actually doing on his bike
03:31So I'm gonna loosen up these bolts as you can see here. I'm just gonna back these out
03:36Spin them right out here, and I'm gonna move on to the upper bolt and as I do this
03:42I'm gonna support the caliper and the reason I'm gonna do that is because these are the only two things holding the caliper to the
03:47Motorcycle, so I'm gonna spin these puppies loose
03:50And back these out, and I'll feel this start to loosen up now an item of note here
03:55Once you do actually get these loose supporting the caliper can be important
03:58This is a fairly light aluminum caliper on a very strong stainless line, so it'll be okay if this one hangs by
04:04The weight of the caliper however if you've got something a little different if you've got say a big old shovel banana
04:09Caliper hanging off of maybe a weak rubber line you might want to think about supporting your caliper somehow once you get it off
04:14There whether that includes maybe a wooden block or a chalk to set it on or perhaps
04:18Unbending a coat hanger and running it from from above in order to suspend the caliper a little bit you might want to think
04:23About possibly supporting it if you have a really heavy caliper on a fairly weak brake line
04:27So as I slide this thing off. We're gonna get a better look at the caliper itself here now as I back this off
04:33I'm gonna be careful not to bang it against the wheel and that's a big concern for you sport bike guys who have big big rotors
04:39So once I have this thing off here
04:41We can sort of see some of the componentry here now what I need to do in order to get all of the pieces out
04:46Of here, so we can start assessing things is to remove this caliber pin
04:49This is gonna be the piece that's probably most different from most riders
04:53Not everybody's gonna have one pin heck you might not be able to see your pin your bike might not even use a pin
04:58However use this again as sort of a rough guideline for how this process is going to work out
05:02For you you should have your factory service manual open and between that and watching me do this
05:07You should have a rough idea of how this process is going to go
05:10So I'm gonna take a hook pick here and the first thing I'm gonna do is remove
05:13This little cotter pin that retains this should it back out. So I'm gonna pop this puppy out of there and
05:19Set that aside because we're gonna reuse that and then I'm gonna back the pin out
05:24So you'll notice I have my hand both above and below this sometimes these things can sort of explode once you start taking parts apart
05:30If you don't have a factory service manual now
05:32It's an excellent time to take a picture or two or maybe sketch out exactly how the parts are oriented if you're not sure
05:38But again, I'm gonna push you to have your factory service manual handy
05:41That's really the best way to make sure you get things back together
05:44So you can see this caliper pins loosening right up here. I'm gonna spin this out just a little farther
05:50And some stuff like I said, this might fly apart. I'm hoping it doesn't we're gonna give this a little yank
05:57Okay, so we have the pin out now and my hand is holding everything else together here
06:02So I'm gonna pull pieces out and kind of talk about them as I pull them out here
06:05Now you'll notice right here
06:07We're looking at the shim all this does is provides a little bit of downward pressure
06:11It keeps the pads from jiggling around inside of the caliper. We're gonna reuse this so we want to set this aside as well
06:16Now you can see the pads are free. I'm gonna slide these out the bottom and we're gonna talk about these for just a moment
06:22So we'll let that caliper set there as I said, this is pretty light caliper on a pretty strong brake line
06:26We're okay to let that thing hang again
06:28Make sure that you're supporting yours if you do have a heavy one on a weak brake hose
06:32So here are your actual pads themselves
06:34So you can see here as these have worn down and gotten some pretty good use out of these buzzsaw rides pretty hard
06:39And he's gotten he's gotten his money's worth out of these pads
06:42There's a little bit of life left in them, but really these could probably stand to be replaced
06:47So one of the things that's important as far as doing your brake job isn't just getting the new parts in there
06:51But it's actually examining the old parts and making sure they're wearing correctly
06:54One of the things I like to look at is fore-to-aft wear
06:57So for instance, you can see this brake pad is actually worn pretty evenly fore-to-aft and that's a good thing
07:02It means it's not cocking and it's bore
07:04If you do notice some sort of a wear pattern like that that is tapered that can indicate a few things
07:08It might indicate improperly lubricated slide pins
07:11But in this case since there's only one pin that wouldn't really be the issue
07:14The other thing that might indicate too though is perhaps a set of caliper pistons that might be hanging up
07:19You might have a piston that's hanging up somewhere and only one piston in a multi piston system is doing its job
07:24So it is really important to examine that fore-to-aft wear. Another thing that's important too though is top-to-bottom wear
07:30How this thing is wearing from the outside of the you know
07:33The outer circumference of the brake into the center of it
07:36Some of you may notice again that your pads could cock perhaps the other way to again possibly due to improperly
07:42Improperly lubricated slide pins or in a really bad scenario
07:46If you've got a big ridge up at the top here of unused brake material a lot of times that points to an improperly
07:50installed brake pad
07:52If you see that you should have your eagle eyes on and really be
07:55Picky as you're pulling that thing apart to make sure everything was put together correctly odds are you're probably gonna find a mistake
08:00Just keep that in mind as you're assessing things. So in looking at both of these pads, they're actually in really good shape here
08:06It looks like Ed's brake system is functioning normally as far as the hydraulics are concerned and that's a great sign
08:11The other thing we also want to check out though too is the condition of the rotor itself
08:16So this can be kind of important look at the surface of the rotor. You'll see this is nice and smooth
08:20It looks really good
08:21It's not glazed over and there's also no deep scoring if you happen to be doing brakes on your motorcycle
08:26Because you heard a terrible noise like a ship scraping over the Great Barrier Reef. That's not good
08:31What that probably was was the metal backing plates digging into your rotors. It's an expensive sort of a thing
08:37You're usually gonna have to replace your rotor if that happened
08:41The reason is that if you wear those scores those deep grooves into this rotor
08:45They can chew into your new pads. All you're gonna do by replacing the pads is mask the symptom
08:50You're not gonna address the problem
08:51Now even if your rotors do look really good like buzz saws do here with no deep scoring
08:55We still need to measure them the pads themselves as they squeeze onto the rotor scrub it away
09:01They really just squeeze the thing until eventually the rotor wears down and thinness
09:05So we're gonna take a micrometer here and check the thickness really fast
09:08Now when you do this you want to do it a couple different places
09:12In order to determine the thickness and make sure that the rotor is actually good to go both the inner and the outer and at
09:18A couple places along the diameter of the rotor
09:22This thing's in pretty good shape. So really Ed's got some great
09:25Some great wear going on here. His rotors aren't all ragged out his hydraulics appear to be doing well
09:30This is a perfect candidate for a new set of brake pads
09:33So we're gonna continue with the process
09:35At this stage what I like to do is start cleaning some things up and I usually use a brake specific cleaner in order
09:41To do that cleaning things up allows me to do several things first
09:44It allows you to more carefully assess the condition of the components
09:48The other thing that lets you do is make sure that all the parts that we're gonna be reusing like the shim and the pin
09:53They're gonna have a nice clean surface from when we lubricate them rather than mushing the lubricant into this dirty
09:58Lubricant dirt mess we can clean them off start with a fresh slate and we're gonna have nice clean lubricant hitting nice clean parts
10:05So what I'm gonna do here is spray things down. I'm gonna spray the caliper down again
10:09Be careful with this stuff. This stuff is also not really that good for you
10:12So put your gloves on use your respirator if you have one
10:16And one of the areas I want to pay special attention to him to turn this over so you can see are actually the the caliper
10:22Pistons here. These are kind of important. So these are sealed really only with very delicate rubber seal
10:27so it's important to get in here get everything clean because that that
10:31That brake dust on there can actually be kind of acidic and it can wind up being abrasive as well
10:36So this area especially is really important to get all cleaned up
10:39I'm gonna grab a rag here to sort of help
10:41Assist me making sure that I've gotten all the dirt and goop out of all the nooks and crannies on the caliper
10:46That really is pretty important there. And again, just assess how things are looking by cleaning things up
10:51You should be exposing a little bit better to you know, the the condition of the parts that you're actually working on
10:58So at this stage
10:59We're pretty much ready to rock and roll now
11:01The reason I clean before I start doing anything else again is because we're gonna have to move these caliper pistons back into the bore
11:07This is really important because Ed's pads were wearing down as he used them. They got thinner and thinner and thinner
11:13So these pistons had to come out closer and closer to the center in order to make the pads contact the rotor
11:17Well, these nice new pads are much thicker, but they're not gonna fit in this same width space
11:22So what we're gonna do is drive these caliper pistons back into their bores
11:25Now again, the cleaning sort of becomes important here because these pistons are now exposed and we're gonna be shoving them back in there
11:31We want them nice and clean. We're coming back in there
11:34We don't want to drive all sorts of dirt and goo and just general road muck back into the caliper
11:39So by having these clean we've ensured that we're ready to rock and roll as far as the caliper piston withdrawal process
11:45So I'm gonna use my fingers to push these in usually I'm strong enough. I can get them in there
11:49So I'm gonna try and cheat this towards you a little bit
11:50So you can actually see me driving these in and you'll notice as you drive some in some other ones might pop out
11:55But eventually you should be able to work these all
11:59Back into their bores now if it turns out you're having trouble doing that
12:02one of the things I like to do is grab the old pads and I will put them back into place and
12:07Take a pry bar or a flathead screwdriver and use something to drive them carefully back in
12:12So what we're doing here what we're looking for as you can see, I think I'm just about there
12:16We're looking for these pistons to be more or less flush with the caliper body itself
12:21I think we're about there right here. You can see with the exception that last piston. We're pretty much flush here
12:27This is gonna give us the room we need in order to get the pads
12:29Back into the caliper and the whole assembly back up onto the bike now from here
12:34What I need to do is lubricate some things before I start reinstalling. So let's get down to the workbench
12:38I made a little bit of a mess here, but I'll show you some of the stuff I'm working on
12:42So I'm gonna start lubricating things the first thing I want to talk about is the actual lubricant itself
12:46You can't just use any old product here. You want to use a brake specific lubricant?
12:51The one I'm using is actually silicone based
12:53Silicone is good stuff to use because again, you've got rubber seals in the caliper there
12:56Some of you who have slide pins for your caliper are going to have
13:00Rubber boots protecting them if you're using anything that's petroleum based
13:04It turns out that you can indeed tear up the rubber with a petroleum based product. The two are not really
13:10Compatible so make sure that you're make sure that you're taking care of that. So I've cleaned up our caliper pin as well
13:15I'm gonna lubricate this and you want a fair a fair amount of lube in there, but don't go crazy
13:20We want enough lube that's gonna stay on there and it's gonna survive a couple of wet days
13:24But we also don't want so much on there that's being flung all over the place
13:28So use your judgment, but again a little bit of lube goes a pretty long way here now the other place
13:33I like to lube too and this might sound a little crazy is actually the backs of the pad
13:37So I'm gonna put a little dollop on there
13:39And the reason I like to do that is we're putting lubricant basically anywhere metal is moving against each other
13:43So the pistons themselves hit the backs of the pads a lot of times when people have brake noise, they can't figure out
13:49It's not actually the lining material that's hitting the rotors making noise
13:52sometimes it's actually the backing plates on the on the brakes actually
13:57Making contact and sort of standing up and singing if you will with respect to the caliper piston
14:02So what I like to do is throw them on there and you'll notice I'm putting this stuff on here
14:05Very very thin layer. I like to liken it to buttering your toast or putting jelly on your toast in the morning
14:11So I'm gonna slide these carefully down here now one of the other things you're gonna see me do here is actually get rid of
14:15These gloves and the reason I'm doing it because I have lube on them now as important as the lubricant is we don't want to
14:20Actually throw the lubricant onto any of the moving parts of the bike that have to do with the braking
14:25We don't want the friction surface getting gooped up. We don't want the pads getting contaminated
14:30We also don't want any of it hitting the rotor
14:32So be sure to change gloves frequently and don't get that lube all over the place
14:35There's only a few select spots. We want to see lubricant
14:38So as of right now because I've got my caliper pistons driven back into the bore
14:42I've got all my parts lubed up here pretty much set to rock and roll. We're about ready to tackle the reinstallation process
14:48So this part can get a little bit tricky because we're gonna be putting a couple things in play at the same time
14:53You might feel like you need three or four hands. I'm gonna attack this right now
14:56You guys are probably gonna have a couple laughs at my expense because it does get a little bit hairy
15:00So we're gonna start loading the pads in one at a time again being careful not to get lubricant all over the place
15:06So we'll slide the first pad in and this is also something I want to talk about
15:10It's probably gonna make a couple of you laugh, but it is really important pads are two-sided
15:14There's a friction material and then a non friction material side if you put these in backwards
15:19You put the backing plate up against the rotor. You're gonna have a big problem. It's metal on metal
15:23You're gonna ruin your rotor and you're probably gonna ruin your pad and you may not stop in time
15:27So pay really careful attention and make sure that the parts of the brake pad that are supposed to touch the rotor are actually
15:34Oriented correctly, so I've got these pads in here and I'm sort of holding them in with my hand
15:39This might get like I said, this might get a little bit tricky here
15:42So now what I need to do is orient that shim clip back in this place
15:46So what this is gonna do is basically keep downward tension on the on the pad so that they're not rattling around in here
15:51So every time where we hit a bump, we don't hear the pads rattling about so we're gonna install that puppy carefully in here
15:56I'm probably blocking the camera just a bit but work that into place
16:00So that's now in place and from here. I need to slide my pin in
16:05So this is where it gets just a little bit tricky
16:07So kind of just a one piece at a time sort of thing and I'm gonna feed this in here get past the first pad
16:16Which appears to be going well, we're gonna go over the shim clip in order to keep that pinned in place and
16:22then from here
16:24We can get that last pad popped in
16:28And after we work that in there, we're pretty much set to fly we can now snug this puppy down
16:33So let me grab my tool here
16:35So at this stage, I'm gonna tell you you should be using your factory service manual
16:39You should check out your factory torque spec and you should use your torque wrench do as I say not as I do
16:44I've done a lot of brake jobs
16:45I think buzzsaw is fairly confident that I'm not gonna send him careening into a school bus full of children
16:50However, I'm gonna encourage you to do things the right way
16:52Don't cut any corners use your factory torque spec on here. So I now have this thing snug down
16:58One of the smaller things I'm gonna make sure that I do is reattach that little cotter pin the just in case cotter pin
17:05We're gonna slip that back into place and from here
17:07I really am just two bolts away from getting this ready to rock and roll
17:10So it's important to have the pads spread as I said
17:12We have that nice big gap in there and that's gonna allow us to work the pads and caliper back over the rotor
17:18Now this is in place I'm gonna reinstall both of the retaining bolts here
17:23Same deal applies on these as with the other bolt. You really should be using your factory
17:29spec on these with a with a torque wrench
17:32sometimes though
17:34We break rules
17:35I'm gonna snug these down swap out my socket here
17:38And at this point we're really getting close to the end of the job. So I'm gonna get these in place
17:44And tighten them up now if you have a dual disc system like we're working on here
17:49You're gonna want to think about the other side. You don't want to do one set of these
17:53It's okay to do fronts or the rear independent of each other. That's perfectly fine
17:57But if you're working on an axle with multiple calipers, you want to make sure you service both of the calipers at the same time
18:03That's pretty important
18:04You're gonna want to service those to make sure that again your braking performance is the same side to side if your brakes are operating
18:10Differently from each side you can wind up with weird pulls or strange behavior
18:14And the other thing to think about too is we're not just replacing the pads
18:16We're also lubricating some pretty important parts here
18:19So if one side is lubricated real well
18:21But the other side hasn't gotten any attention you can notice a difference in performance from one caliper to the other
18:26So we're all snug down here on this thing after we get that other side done
18:31We're ready to rock and roll except for one important step because we drove those caliper pistons back in
18:37They're not really close to the pads right now
18:39So if you grab a hold of the brake lever, you're gonna notice it's gonna sink right to the bars
18:43You may actually have to grab several times to pump that back up and get those caliper pistons back to where they need to be
18:49This is really important that you do this before you roll your bike out of the garage
18:53It can be very disconcerting to go ripping down the road and have absolutely no brake power after three or four grabs the lever
18:59Make sure you do that. It's a really important step. So that about wraps up a brake job
19:03It's the ZLA way of getting brakes on your motorcycle
19:06If you want a little more information about this about some of the pad
19:09Options you have and then also some tips and tricks that we didn't show you here in the video
19:13Scoot on over to the common tread article by clicking that info button
19:16If you're watching us on YouTube
19:17Don't forget to subscribe to us and you can drop a comment down below for some other riders if you have some sort of a
19:23Tidbit that might help other people out and do a great job on their brakes as always. I'm Lemmy. I'm out of here
19:36You