Which brake pads to choose for your sportbike?

Choosing the right brakepads for your sportbike
When I am looking in my owner's manual they do not mention anything about which brake pad to choose (off course, they want you to go to the dealership and have them changed with oem brake pads). Is that really the best way? What about all these different brake pads manufacturers all claiming to be the best? Have you ever experienced after changing brakepads that they were not at all what you expected out of them? Here is some insight on choosing brake pads for your application:

Let's look at how a brakepad is made.
Resins are used to hold the brake pad materials together such as the friction materials being fibreglass, kevlar or arimid. Steel and aluminum maintain the heat stability. There is also filler material such as saw dust. Sometime graphite is added to adjust friction level depending on temperature range of use.

Molding process
Are the pads pressed in a mold one by one or mass pressed? High performance brake pads are pressed one at a time. This would be more durable as the full pressure was applied.

Are the brake pads slow cured or rapid cured?
Usually after pressing the materials in the mold the brake pads go in an oven to remove moisture that is present in the friction mixture. Needless to say, slow curing is always better. rapid curing of the pads can put stress on the friction material by the moisture escaping too fast creating small cracking.

The codes on Brake Pads steel backing plate
The codes refer to the friction formulation and show the consumer its ranking in the chase test.

What is the 'chase test'?
This is where those two letter designation come. The chase test is assigned to add a two letter code that we often see on brake pads. EE, FF, GG, HH. Those letters specify the coefficient of friction when a 1" square piece of friction material is subjected to varying conditions of load, temperature, pressure and rubbing speeds on a chase machine.


The first letter refers to the normal friction coefficient. The second letter refers to the hot friction coefficient based on the fade and recovery test. Brake fade is when you notice brake power is less efficient. Recovery is where your pads are cooling down again.

H has the highest coefficient of friction. (superior braking power)

The friction coefficient codes are as follows:

C = < d =" 0.15" e =" 0.25" f =" 0.35" g =" 0.45" h =" "> 0.55

Now you would think that HH is all you need. Wrong. H might be braking to much if you're only commuting.Racing pads might never reach to the right working temperature... It's pretty much up to you which brake pad is best for you.

I am happy with EBC Sintered Double-H pads. Great pads, if you follow the break in guidelines you will stop a lot sooner and safer. Combine this with stainless steel brake lines and braking will be excellent. Break in: 10 stops from 80 to 40mph. Use some 220 sandpaper on the rotors to remove old pad residue.


Other Brake Pads
DP Race Compound Pads
Galfer HH Braks Pads
Carbone Lorraine SBK3
Ferrodo 911 (Sintergrip)
Vesrah RJL