Bonneville America Forums Forums Technical Forums General Tech Nicks in rear brake disk

I heard some awful noise on my 2nd ride of the season last night when I used the rear brakes. I was less than 2 miles from home, so I decided to wait and check it out in my driveway but before I got there I started to notice some throb in the brake pedal.

When I got off the bike at home I looked at the rear disk and notices some pretty sharp nicks in the disk itself. I'm sure this is a bad thing, but I don't know how bad.

I'll have to take it in for service as I am not terribly mechnical, nor do I have a lot of time to figure it out.

My question is...

Is it safe to ride this about 8 miles to the shop? It kind of freaked me out at how quickly the noise and throb grew worse. I can take slow side streets where I won't need to do a lot of heavy braking, but still.

Most of your braking is done with the front brake. Your slow 8 mile ride to service should not be a problem using just the front brake.

Strange, the nicks. Sounds like maybe the pads are gone and the backing plate is on the rotor, but the backing plates are usually softer steel or copper/bronze than the rotor. Those are some pretty hard steel.

Ride it to the shop, dont use your back brake.

That was my first thought...Maybe some debris?

At least one of the spots was pretty nasty, relatively speaking.

I think you will find the rotor damage is from not changing out your rear brake pad when it was time to. I have a rear Triumph rotor in my scrap pile off a T-100 from an acquaintance who bought his bike used, rode it and rode it, never even looked at his pads and had a complete rear brake failure in traffic on I-5 just as this post describes. Probably the first time he seriously used his front brake, ever. The description of the damaged rotor even fits.

Yeah, that's entirely likely. I'm almost to 10k and this is the 2nd set of pads on there. From some of the other things I've read around here, 5k on a set of pads is about normal, but that seemed low to me.

If you're a heavy back brake user and add in organic pads. 5000 sounds about right.

I never considered myself a heavy back braker, but who knows...It's all relative. Thanks for the advice guys.

I don't use organic pads, I go with the ceramic ones. They last fairly well.

and I use organic to prolong disc life. Pads are cheaper to replace than rotors.

while we're discussing it...Changing the rotor required removing the wheel, yes?

I was looking at it today and I didn't think there would be enough clearance to get at it otherwise, right? Only other time I've assisted in a rotor change it was on an older model V-rod and it was able to be done without completely removing the wheel, but I don't think it will be possible here.

Yes, absolutely.