Brake upgrade

[Mark]

Have been upgrading brakes on 93 fj,got nearly new brake and clutch mc from a bike wrecker in States,braided lines from pommyland,speed bleeders from Portugal and good quality pads from oz,the world is definately getting smaller,the brakes are 200%better than they were.what I was wondering is would r1calipers make a huge difference,would be great to hear a few opinions from fj owners who gave done these brake mods,cheers Mark

[Pat Conlon]

Yep, worth it. Do it. It's all been said before, many, many, many times....

[fj11.5]

as pat said , get them, more than worth the effort , especially if you already have the 14mm master cylinder

[Mark]

Thanks for the info guys,didn't know it had been said many many times only fairly new on forum,just that I had also heard that braided lines and good pads are perfectly adequate,but can't ever be too good with brakes so will get onto some blue spots

[ribbert]

I have done my brake upgrades seperately, m/c, lines, calipers and pads with a good amount of time between each one.

In the last few weeks I went from standard 4 piston calipers with EBC HH pads to Blue Dots with original pads and it was a step backwards in braking.
There is no point going to Blue Dots unless you use better pads.

Obviously the older bikes benefit more from the upgrade, but, as you already have 4 piston calipers, it is my view that the pad choice has a far greater effect than the caliper upgrade.

Below is an exchange from a few weeks back.

Quote from: oldktmdude on October 09, 2012, 08:53:14 PM

  When I first fitted the blue spot callipers to my'85 (about 2 years ago), I bought a set of Goldfren HH sintered pads to use in them. (mainly due to the low price) Up until today I was very satisfied with them. Finally wore them down, so on the strong recommendations of alot of members here, I bought and fitted EBC HH sintered pads. WOW what a difference! I had good braking before but now I have GREAT BRAKING. Hard to believe that there could be so much difference between pads that are supposed to be of a similar compound. A big thankyou goes out to those who recommended the EBC pads.  Regards, Pete.


None of this should be a surprise, these are the best and grippiest pads you can get, and they last.

They cost no more than a couple of tanks of fuel

So, if you've invested in Blue Dots and not running these pads you are short changing yourself on the upgrade.

Spread the word

Noel

[Mark]

Thanks Ribbert that is exactly the sort of first hand info I was hoping,with new discs,fjr1300 m/c,braided lines,new pads the brakes are pretty good,will make blue spots a future upgrade,need to look into improving suspension next.any word on Randy's shock yet( those speed bleeders you recommended are worth their weight in gold,made a pain in the ass job easy)

[baldy3853]

I remember doing mine many yrs ago before it was widely done here, when I did mine I just installed the blue spots and R1 Master cylinder braided lines and the original pads that came with the Blue spots (tight wad) dont know what they were but they were soooooooo much better then standard it wasnt funny, Ive since purchased numerous sets from the US of A for a lot of the guys here in Qld and none of them have had any problem with the upgrade.
If you are going to buy them do it thru the US even try and get Randy or one of the guys here to get and post them as it will work out much cheaper then buying them thru a wrecker there and getting them to post.
Here in Australia at the time it was so much more expensive to buy them 2nd hand which is why I chased them in the US
You can use any model up to the gold spots or even the silvers off an FJR and an FJR master cylinder which is in keeping with the FJ master cylinder look.
Baldy