1150RS Rear Brake Pad Wear

I just replaced the rear pads on my '03 R1150RS (18,600 mi.). The inside pad was nearly gone but the outside pad still had lots of material left. Just curoius as to whether this is the normal wear pattern with the floating calipers. My old airhead, with fixed calipers, would wear the pads pretty evenly.

John

I had the same issue on my 1100R at the same mileage. I took some 600 grit wet/dry sandpaper and smoothed out the guide pins that the pads slide on. The inner pads had been hanging up just a bit. The new pads I installed at that time have been wearing very evenly and at 36K miles are only about 1/3 worn.

Thanks, Tony. I'll try that. The caliper needs to come back off anyway. It seems my dealer sold me metalic pads and the bike needs organic pads instead. Apparently there was a mid year change ('03) and the Chiltons manual (confirmed by Bob's catalog) says the two pad types are NOT interchangable. I suppose I should have read the manual first instead of relying my dealer's parts guy to decide what I needed.

Does anybody know what sorts of bad things might happen if you run metalic pads on an "organic" ABS bike?

John

Metallic pads will tend to wear the rotors. Not a good idea IMHO either for cars or bikes.

You not only need to clean off the corrosion, but...

you need to apply disk brake grease to the pins and the clips that hold the pads in place...

basically any place that touches the pads(except the rotor of course) needs a wee bit of high temp disk brake grease to provide lubrication and fight corrosion...

then the brakes don't drag and wear evenly...