As every bugger else is doing brake related things today.

I changed the front pads on the Bandit today.

Took 5 minutes per side. No stuck pins, no stuck pads, no stuck pistons.
Piece of piss.

<winds back to when I bought the bike>

A couple of days after I bought the bike, I removed the calipers and greased
the pistons, rubber covered ends of the pins and back of the pads. Rubber
grease for the pins and pistons, copper grease on the rear of the pads and
tip of the lower pin where it goes in to the other half of the caliper.

I'll admit to being mildly surprised and annoyed Suzuki neglected to grease
any part of the calipers.


<winds forward to today>

5 mins per side for a pad swap. Not bad. Don't reckon I could knock any time
off that.

As an aside, how much labour would a dealership charge for a pad swap on a
bike with such simple calipers?

 

Moon Badger banged the rocks together and they said :

Seeing as most of them charge by the hour, minimum 1 hour, you should
be asking how many brake changes can they fit in one hour and charge
'n' hours for one physical hour of labour?

 

What I -should- have written is something along the lines of..

'Has anyone had a dealer do the front pads on a post 2000 Bandit?, if so,
how much overall, and what was the labour component'

I rang one local dealership and they reckoned on about £75, which given
their overheads etc etc, I thought was reasonable for a half hour job inc
parts.

 

Me too!!!

--
'Chill Winston.......'

Nige

Subaru WRX (54)
Land Rover Discovery II (2001)
BMW GS1200 (2007)
Honda CBR900RR Fireblade (1997)

 

Changed front brake pads on my little Clio, it was a bugger.

 

Don't be surprised when you have to tackle the other end of the bike,
Suzuki's design team excels at unbelievably ridiculous ideas when it
comes to retaining rear pads. A mild steel headless pin passed
through an alloy caliper, through two pads and into a blind hole in
said alloy caliper is not going to remove easily.

The situation is not improved by the only access to the pins being in
the gap between the pads which is never wide enough for a Mole grip,
and is positively exacerbated by the dissimilar metal corrosion being
aided by all the road shite in the world going over the pins and held
in situ by the poxy plastic cover. All this on an underslung caliper
that is barely six inches off the deck on a good day.

The only way is to take a drill and pop a 4mm hole through the caliper
casting at the end of the blind pin passage. Take a tapered punch,
wedge the caliper in the Workmate and HIT the fucker once you've got
it good and hot. Remember to change to a parallel punch ffs, once the
pin gets under way, or a whole new world of pain is discovered.

I had to split the caliper anyway, as the dust seal grooves had picked
up sufficient shite to pop the seals out into daylight. I was unable
to pull/push/lever or persuade the caliper halves apart as the pins
were welded in so tightly.

I did find the ideal way to remove the wedged-in pistons, though.
Take the caliper half, together with its stuckfast piston to the wood
lathe. Locate the inside of the piston over the chuck jaws and wind
the jaws out until firmly seated. A good firm twist and pull on the
caliper and the piston comes free - so does a quantity of smelly brake
fluid, but that doesn't really matter.

Three days(1) and counting ... rebuild tomorrow.


1. Prolly something like six hours continuous, TBH. Still bloody
ridiculous for a five minute job.

 

I've already done the rear pads. The rear caliper on the ABS model is
( thankfully ) not the stock 'seize-O-matic'

It's actually almost Hondaesque, with a Suzuki twist[1]. Undo a threaded
plug, then unscrew the rear pin. The caliper then releases the rear of the
pads and hinges slightly upwards to allow you to change the pads.

Oh yes. Aside from the underslung bit. We have a number of GS500s at work.
Same caliper as the one used on the rear of the older 600f, ie, an
overslung version of the above.

BTDT.

It does make later work a breeze though. I carry a small stock of pins at
work. When I have to replace the rear pads on one of the 500s, and copper
grease has failed me, I just split the caliper, bend the pin up 90 degrees
and work it out gradually that way. I consider the pins sacrificial as well
as being a challenge.

BTDT. But only once have I had one seize in the open hole.

I do like the wood lathe idea. I'll lodge that one in the back brain for
future use. I have clamped the piston in the edge of a vice and used a pair
of tyre levers to get the caliper half off. It trashes the piston though.

Utterly ridiculous design compounded by Suzukis aversion to using SS pins
with a tiny dob of copper grease on the 'blind' end.

[1]In typical fashion, in order to increase the amount of unnecessary
frustration, Suzuki have made it next to impossible to unscrew the blanking
plug. Insufficient clearance to get a chubby screwdriver in. Insufficient
clearance to get a rachet driver and bit in, so I end up with the bit held
in the jaws of a pair of pliers. Undo the outer plug to gain access to the
pin and Lo!, as you undo the bloody pin, your Allen key contacts the
exhaust with still threads remaining. So, begin loosening it with the Allen
key, then switch to a ratchet bit held with pliers. It will be too stiff to
turn with just fingers.

 

This is why there's a shiny new pair of pads and pins for the TL
sitting in a box. They've been sitting there for over a year, now. I
think they like it there.

I did have a cunning plan (well, two cunning plans) to deal with the
problem. One involved grinding flats on the pins and putting spanner
onto them to twist them free, the other involved selling the bike
while the pads still have an ounce of life left in them.

Ther is now a third option, thanks for that.

 

They'll take root. And the corroded-in pins won't get any less stuck
with the passage of time.

It is a known workaround. I'm sure I've seen it here before too -
iirc Eddie had to do the same thing.

They'll never twist free, you'll just round the spanner flats. Get
the drill out (I used an automatic centre punch on the exposed end of
the pin and gave it a good few pops and you should have seen the
little wisps of corrosion coming out) and get the pin tapped through.

I know you're competent in this area, but if your bottle and tuits
aren't up to it, post or UR the caliper over here and I'll do it for
you.

 

I can't remember the last time I changed rear brake pads. I'd expect
to get at least 50k miles out of a set and I don't usually keep bikes
that long.

 

They sieze on eventually and then wear down.

 

Only if you use the bike in winter.

 

Do ANY of the manufacturers? Kwaka didn't even grease the rear suspension
linkage on my Zed and the nipples were there to be used.

And if you had to, you're not planning things properly. One should always
allow at least 4 hours for a re-pad session.

A minimum one hour, so anything from 30 quid upwards.


--
Beav

VN 750
Zed 1000
OMF# 19

 

Jolly decent of you. You were quite right, it was a slight lack of
confidence that made me hold off, but with every other bugger doing
them and your offer as a backup, I was stung into action.

Initially, I tried heat, then sawing the pins in half and hammering a
screwdriver between the halves on the grounds of 'divide and conquer',
which got the outer bits out easily. I then tried tapping the inner
bits from different angles to loosen them: buggers snapped when I
tried to twist them out, didn't they.

So I drilled & punched them and they came out a treat. Not only that,
but I managed to get the holes pretty much dead central. Chuffed, I
was.

 

They've changed that on the later SV's as I found out to my joy last week.

That was a design classic if ever there was.

Here speaks a man with experience. Machine Mart sell some great "Suzuki
caliper tools" in the form of both tapered and straight drifts. I have them
all

I told my pal with the SV to take out the retaining pin every couple of
months whether he's fitting pads or not. He's glad I told him and glad he
took my advice when he came to fit new pads this week. Like you say, it took
him 10 minutes and he's got the mechanical abilities of an untrained mong.


--
Beav

VN 750
Zed 1000
OMF# 19

 

They're for the kids.


--
Beav

VN 750
Zed 1000
OMF# 19