Bonneville America Forums Forums Technical Forums General Tech Need opinion on Rear Brake Pads

My bike is in the shop for unrelated work when I get a voice mail from my mechanic asking if I want him to install rear brake pads. I can't talk to him until Tues. because they are closed Sun/Mon. Should I be leary? 7500 miles. I'm not hard on my brakes. They're not making any noises and are working fine. What do you think?

Without checking them yourself, there's no way to know. The shop wants to make a sale, and possibly help you out while in for service. If you're easy on the brakes, as I am, I shouldn't think new pads were a necessity, yet. They're easy to change and inexpensive should they need it later.

I changed my front and rear at 8500 miles.
Just because I was doing the front, get it all done while I was doing it.
Not because I thought the rears needed it.
If you use the front mostly and are easy on the rears I would think 10k or more you could get out of them.

There's a lot of people out there (myself included) who found the rears wearing out a lot faster than the fronts. Personally I'd be asking the dealer how badly they needed replacing and if the answer's "not crucial but getting close" I'd ask him to supply but not fit them. Get the last month or so out of your original ones then put em on yourself. It's pretty simple, only takes one spanner and one hex key.

Matt

Thanks for the input guys. Wish I knew what a "spanner" was.

My '02 ate the rear pads in under 5K miles. EBC's from Brent are doing a much better job.

my rears were toast about 500 miles before i checked them at 9000. my dealer mechanic showed me what i already knew...it's an easy job to do it yourself, but long as it's in there...

my front pads have plenty of meat left. of course the speedy has dual disks, so maybe that's why.

cat