Ducati Multistrada Brakes and Brembo Brake Pad LA, SA, SC, SR and SP compounds and maintenance, Pads
so hello and welcome to Just The Way It Is... my name's Carl and this is part three and today we're going to be talking about brakes now brakes on the multistrada especially on the forums is one of those topics where there's a lot of people talking a lot of utter nonsense so if you've watched Part 1 you'll know that i'm a fully trained qualified technician / mechanic i've been working on cars and motorbikes for over 30 years i've had factory training from Lucas the Brake manufacturers and although i'm not going to say i'm an expert i know what i'm talking about and a lot of the stuff that's talked about on the forums about the things that you should or you need to do with the brakes to make things better is just nonsense so the first thing we need to cover is the brakes on the multistrada all the way through from the 2010 right the way up to the 1260 the standard braking systems are brilliant they're really really good and as long as they're maintained and serviced and set up correctly unless you're going really really fast and you ride like a racer on the road or you do track days you really don't need to do an awful lot. the biggest problem and it applies to motorbikes and to cars is contamination especially when you're buying a used Motorbike you've really got no idea what the owner before you has done how the Motorbike has been maintained and when people clean their bikes they use the wrong materials they get the wrong products and if you get contamination between the discs and the pads and they're even ever so slightly contaminated you're going to make things worse and so what i'm going to cover in this video is what to check and the things you need to look for and then later on i'll talk about the upgrade route the upgrading route you can do i mean if you are a very fast rider and you're happy going really fast on the road there is a sequence of things to do but you don't need to start changing calipers straight away you don't need to start changing discs straightaway or master cylinders there's a lot you can do to the standard system to make sure it's working correctly and when it works correctly they're very good there is an achilles heel a common problem across the first three 2010-2012 , 2013-2014 and the DVT and that's the rear brake but when we get to the rear brake in a moment i'm going to explain what the problem is and the things that you can do to make things better it's going to take a little bit of work but i'm going to explain what you need to do now brakes themselves are the single most important system on your bike so i thought long and hard about this and i have done some how-to instructions for different forums and other vehicles that i've had, but i'm not going to do it for the multistrada i really do think that if you're going to have a bike like this that goes this quick you really need to know what you're doing if you're going to work on your brakes so this is not a how-to, this is going to be how to check the things you need to look at and then you can decide for yourself whether this is a job for you or ideally give it to your dealer or a professional to make sure it's right so let's get started and i'll start on the front and i'll do some explanations so in making this video i made lots of little video clips and once i put them all into the editing software i was shocked i was shocked to see that the total video time was an 1 hour and 20 minutes and there's no way you guys are going to sit through an hour and 20 minutes of me talking about Brakes so i've had to remove quite a bit of content to make the video even the length that it is now, so what have i removed well what i decided to do was to remove the video clips that i'd made that are already available on other channels on youtube so let me give you a couple of examples so you understand what i've removed so cleaning of the brake pads there's good videos on there the video i made was six minutes i've removed it the cleaning of the brake discs or the brake rotors that was another eight minute video that i felt i didn't really need to have because if you put it into the search bar on youtube there's lots of good videos another example is the brake fluid flush or the brake fluid change my video was 18 minutes telling you where to start what to do in which order to do things and again there's really no point um there's an exceptionally good video on a channel called canyon chasers i'll put a link in the description to block below they have a fairly lengthy video i think it's about 30 minutes but they cover in detail how to change the brake fluid on your multistrada and there really isn't any any point me replicating or duplicating that and making this video even longer so let's move on. removing and taking off the pads are equally
easy to get out and you're going to need to clean everything in warm soapy water and then you need to make sure that this surface we start with the brake discs is also clean so to complete this cleaning process you're going to need three things the first thing is aluminium oxide sanding paper ideally you need two types 500 grit which you're going to use for cleaning the brake pads and 1500 grit for cleaning the brake discs the discs end up with old brake material bonded to the disc and you need to sand that down with a very gentle circular motion the second thing you're going to need is brake cleaner probably a couple of tins of sprayable brake cleaner now the third thing look at the picture above press the pause button and read the information this information is really important the lubricant you choose and the lubricant that you use to free off those pistons is totally vital that you use the right stuff as you can see on the image above i've put some part numbers up for you so you can buy these i think amazon even has them and they have both the old and the new type it's the same stuff in the both the tubes now don't think that you can guess and choose a different product from a different manufacturer because you have to be really careful because the lubricant you use must not have a detrimental effect on the seals but at the back of the pistons i've been using this stuff for i don't know 15 20 years and prior to that it was a red rubber grease that we used to use but the stuff that you can see on the screen is what i've been using for a long time and it does not cause any problems now let's look at the next image now on here again you can pause it and have a read but what i want to explain in a little bit of detail is you can see on all four pistons there looks like to be an excess of lubricant on those pistons but this is just before i start the freeing off process so you need to put a small amount on each piston work it all the way around the surface with your finger and then you're going to move those pistons in and out backwards and forwards until those pistons move really freely in and out and i think i've explained it already in the video what you're looking for is the uniform movement of all four pistons in and back at the same time this is what you're looking for this is what you're aiming for so once this cleaning process and the lubrication process is complete i'll put up another image now now on this image you can see the pistons are fully retracted or fully pushed back into their ports their holes and that there is no excess lubricant you need to make sure that the inside of your calipers look like this, they need to be spotless you need a lint-free rag you're going to need some of the use some of the brake cleaner spray it onto the lint free rag and clean the inside of your calipers and remove off any excess now the thing you have to be really careful about with these particular calipers is there's not a lot of travel there's not a lot of free travel with those pistons inside once you take that caliper off the disc and you take these pads out you must not press the brake lever or those pistons will pop out very very easily once they pop out and fluid comes out and air gets in you're going to have to bleed the whole system and you basically let air get in , which will create more problems so this really is a job for someone that knows what they're doing and they've got the correct tools to be able to bleed the system afterwards the cleaning you can do but if you have any problems or you have any doubts about these pistons now because there's four pistons inside if you imagine that that is that they are the four pistons when you press the brake cleaver they should both they should both sides all four pistons move uniformly in when you take your hand off of the brake lever they move back a very very small amount but what you're looking for is that all four pistons move in uniformly now the first time i took these apart and had a look i had one piston only just one that was working in and out at gentle pressure and the other three they weren't seized but they were stuck and the only way you could get them to to move in and out was press harder on the brake lever but what you want is a balance of all four pistons moving in and out uniformly at the same time so there's quite a bit of cleaning to do so if you can get these calipers clean free and the pistons moving freely and uniformly your brake discs are clean there's no there's no contaminants on there and your brake pads are also in a good condition ideally fit some new ones it will make a big difference to the brakes on the front of your bike now these are the standard brembo ducati oem pads you can fit alternatives there is a limit to what this setup can cope with if you really pick up the pace you eventually after a lot of heartbreaking end up with um the best way to describe it is a wooden feeling front brake you get to the point where there just isn't any more to come no matter how hard you pull that brake lever and on the forums they tell you you need to change the calipers to Brembo M50,s which requires a modification because the mounting point on here for the fluid lines is in a different place it comes out the side so you also need to change the brake fluid lines however what you can do is upgrade your brake pads EBC do some really nice ones . these came out this year 2021 these are the Brembo SR pads they've only been out i think they came out in march i've got them in here and they're really good however when you start fitting racing brake pads you change the temperature range in which the brakes work so with the oem pads you can set off cold in the morning and your brakes will work fine um you know 10 degrees early spring or autumn and your brakes are still going to work okay and they'll work all the way through the summer and you'll get consistent braking through a wide temperature range when you change to a racing brake pad like these these are the SR what you do is you change that working temperature range and what i found is that for the first three or four hundred kilometers i was not impressed with them and they take quite a bit of time to bed in obviously there's going to be some wear on your brake disc and your new pads have to bed in and basically wear to the shape of the brake disc we're talking very very small margins points of millimeters you know a tenth of a millimeter a fiftieth of a millimeter that sort of thing but it takes some time for the pads to bed in but it's the temperature range that causes the problem now if i'm riding at traffic speed normal traffic speed these pads are not very good they feel quite dead and there's if you pull the lever hard the bike stops it's not dangerous but they're not brilliant and in that situation the standard oem pads are much much better however when the speed increases or you're riding with a faster group once these get warm they are so much better than the original pads but you need to get them HOT so what i find is in in spring when i first fitted them 10 12 degrees it takes me 15 20 minutes of riding with braking on and off for these to come up to temperature and once this the setup once your tyres are warm your discs and your calipers and your pads are warm they work really really well and when you start to push on and you're going that bit faster you don't have that dead wooden feeling that you do with the original pads so that's an option you can take with the front brakes so after that if you upgrade your brake pads and you still want more from your braking system we're going to talk about the rear in the moment then obviously you've got to look at changing upgrading your caliper with your brake lines and then possibly changing your brake discs and there are lots of things you can do but to come back to my original point most of the the cars and the bikes i work on where people come in with brake problems it's all down to contamination people cleaning their bikes using the wrong chemicals the wrong materials spraying stuff around here not paying attention and you've only got to get a bit of silicone spray on these brake discs and go for a ride and you've ruined a set of pads and you've got to clean everything i can't emphasize this enough it really makes a huge difference having these contamination free make sure this surface and your pads are spotlessly clean there's no contamination you've only got to do it once thoroughly when you buy the bike once it's yours and then you can make sure when you clean your bike and you're spraying and you're polishing put a rag or an old cloth or an old bed sheet over your brakes when you're doing the cleaning of your bike you cannot get anything on these the discs or the brake pads or you will damage them very easy to make a mistake so i hope that helps so we now get to the last section which is the brembo brake pads and specifically the compounds and instead of you looking at me while i'm talking to you at the same time i thought it'd be much more informative to actually put some slides up to help you understand the different compounds because it's not easy to establish what it is that you might like to choose for your multistrada so on the very first screen we've got the oem or the ducati supply brake pads you can see the part numbers for the front pads and the part number for the rear pads if you go to your dealer and they tell you you need new brake pads front or rear this is what they're going to fit now there's nothing really wrong with the original equipment ducati pads but the the thing you need to understand is that when ducati worked with brembo to create a brake pad front and rear for the multi strada it had to work on such a huge range of different environments different temperature ranges from the northern hemisphere northern america canada northern europe where it can be very cold to asia where it's very humid and very wet to central europe where it rains a lot like in the uk and the southern climates where it's nice and warm and can get very hot also the the conditions like dust have to be taken into account and then in addition to all of that the pad has to work for a wide range of users so there's no point a customer driving out of a ducati dealer and getting 500 yards down the road pulling a handful of front brake and going straight over the handlebars because the bike has performance pads..... ducati would have a lawsuit on their hands and the same goes for a customer that sets off in one or two degrees on a rainy day in london he's got to get across town because he's going to work he uses his bike to commute his brakes need to work from the moment he pulls out his drive so it's a compromise all the way through it is a compromise so that's the the OEM pad but there is a lot you can do to improve this.
go into the second page i'm going to call this stage one just to make it easier to understand so the brembo LA pad now this is a very good pad you would should really consider this as a replacement for the the standard ducati brake pad on the front now the question is have i used this on my own bike the answer is no however i have worked on apart from my own multistrada i've done two customer bikes the same process with changing the fluid getting the air out of the rear adjusting the rear brake pedal travel and sorting out the sticking pistons in the calibers which is a really common problem so this particular customer he was really honest from the get-go he said he doesn't ride fast he doesn't go on tour, he had owned the bike from new and felt that the rear brake was pretty useless which it had and that the front felt like it was kind of sticking grabbing he wasn't really sure how to describe it so we had a look. so if you do all of the things that i've covered in this video and what's going to come in the part 2 which is the rear brakes you can fix most of the problems so what we decided to do with his bike was fit these Brembo LA pads and they're actually really good and they are a step-up from the standard ducati pad they're going to give you a little bit of performance improvement but they're going to give you excellent mileage very very similar to the standard ducati pad so if you're a commuter and you use your bike throughout the whole year and a whole range of temperatures and conditions these are a really great pad and i would recommend them so we're going to move on to the third screen so again for simplification purposes we're going to call this stage two and this is the Brembo SA front pad the SA is as far as i'm aware only designated for a front brake application and you would consider it a performance brake pad it is not to be used on the race track you might get an odd small session out of these pads but they're really not that sort of thing so in what application would you use these well these are really for people that are experienced or accomplished and they're a quick rider or someone that does quite a lot of touring someone that goes two up or they go with all their partners and top boxes and they've got quite a bit of weight on the back and they're going through the alps or through the mountains where you've probably experienced at some point in your time with your multistrada this dead wooden feeling that you sometimes get from the front brake when you're kind of at the end of its capabilities now if you've experienced that even the once you're probably the sort of rider that's ready to move up in terms of performance to this sort of pad so this is the sa now have i had any experience of this on my own bike no however the second customer's bike that i did he actually came to me via recommendation and he wanted a quote for changing the brake calipers on the front of his bike to M-50s so what i did i got him to come along on a saturday morning and we went for a 20-minute ride just for me to get a feel and a look to what kind of rider he was and he was a quick rider but at no point did i think he needed M50 brakes because it's a verey expensive you're talking really minimum of 500 euros dollars pounds for a set of new calipers then you need the new brake fluid lines and it's quite a bit of work to do and so the bill would have been quite substantial so what we agreed to do with this chaps bike was to do the same as what we've talked about earlier with the the maintenance the freeing off of the pistons but we decided to try the SA pads now when i did this bike i didn't have a youtube channel and i wasn't interested in recording anything really and if i could have a video of the smile on his face when he took his crash helmet off when he came back from his road test he was such a happy bunny because it really transformed his bike so this is a really good place if you're a quick rider and you don't do track days so let's move on to the next slide so this is what we're going to call stage three this is the brembo SR and this is the replacement for the original SC now the SC was out has been out for many many years and a lot of people with with race road bikes hyper sport bikes use in the front of the calipers they can be a really good brake pad they're really intended for very fast road use or track use track days that sort of thing now there's a bit of disinformation about these on the internet these are the Brake Pad that i actually have fitted to my multistrada and you've probably seen from the video earlier on and in the page yet to come there is a problem with these and that is when they're not hot and they loose temperature they don't work very well you don't have faulty brakes you don't have brakes that don't work but the the performance drop-off is really quite significant because they're meant as a track day pad so if i was honest and if i had known this from reading the forums in the first place i probably wouldn't have fitted the SR pad i would probably have fitted the SA pad from the previous screen now the reason is what i end up having to do is for the vast majority of time it's fine as long as you are aware of having to keep temperature in your brakes and you have to give it time to warm up they're fine and they do perform really really well when these are HOT they are another step up from the SA pad which we've just talked about however for me when i go on tour and i'm with a mixed ability group these pads are no good i actually have to remove them and i refit the original ducati pad because the operating temperature range is much lower and so they perform they give a good even performance across across a wide rating ranging temperature so i actually fit the original pads when i go on tour with our bike club because there's no point having race pads in so let's move on to the very last screen and this really is just to reiterate um be very careful choosing the SR or the SC pad it can be if you're a fast rider and you take your bike on track it can work really well for you um but don't be led astray with what everyone says on the forums because they do say they're a great pad but what they don't tell you is that when these things get cold they're pretty awful they're pretty poor so my suggestion uh would be look at the slides that we've just talked through and really decide between the la or the sa pad and yeah i hope that helps there's a lot of information there you can obviously pause the screens and read some more so thank you very much for watching the next video is going to be the rear brakes the rear brake pedal adjustment and obviously choosing pads for the rear of your multi strada so thank you very much and i'll see you in the next video
2022-02-08 06:40
