EBC Brake Pads

To guide towards the best brake pads for your motorcycle you we will need to know the type of motorcycle and what it is being used for. The below guide is listed with the most popular riding style first with a bedding in guide at the end.

General Street Motorcycles – Highway use

If your ride is in the lighter half of modern bikes and below 400cc engine size and also ridden at speeds below 70-80 mph, a premium organic brake pad will be more than enough. EBC Brakes produce an excellent material E327 for this application of which to date over 35 million sets have been sold and used by motorcyclists globally on lighter bikes and scooters. These pads are capable of replacing sintered or organic original products and are fully ECE R 90 brake safety tested and German TÜV tested with an ABE certification. These EBC organic brake pads deliver good stopping power, medium to long lifetime and minimal brake fade. The ECE R90 test also includes evaluation for wet weather braking and these brake pads have therefore passed that test.

If your bike is heavier and faster and again used for street riding, the EBC organic brake pads will certainly work fine in most cases and again are tested up to 1400cc bike use, but lifetime may guide you towards a semi sintered or fully sintered brake pad. The EBC V-pads™ are a semi sintered type that are popular with cruiser style bikes and classics with a slightly lower friction level or bite. Whereas the EBC fully sintered Double-H™ brake pads  offer very long lifetime and superb high friction braking. These Double-H™ brake pads are HH friction rated  (highest known) and have become a world number one choice and remain best brake pads for Sport bikes and Superbike motorcycles, plus they are available in three different compounds. The standard road going Double-H™ gives very long mileage and superb braking on fast street riding, heavy loads and high speeds. The EPFA Extreme Pro grade offers a slightly refined and more heat stable blend of brake pad that offers combination street and track use and allows you to ride your bike to a track event, race it and ride home safely numerous times. Again the EPFA brake pad is fully homologated according to ECE R90 and street legal worldwide. If you are purely using the bike for race use the new EBC GPFAX pads are a superb choice and have an ultra high friction and excellent heat stability. They are however too grippy for normal street use and are not approved for highway riding. See section on road race brakes below.

Off Road Motocross and ATV use

Mud, wet and sand can erode pads very quickly so choices here are more targeting lifetime than heat fade. Normal organic pads can be life enhanced with the addition of copper and carbon granules such as the EBC X pads or TT pads as they are sold in Europe. These offer a superb blend of cooler braking making the best brake pads and ideal for Enduro motorcycle bikes, where use on and off roads at medium speeds with the same pad is required.

The X or TT pads can also be used for sport ATV riding but in severe conditions of contamination a Utility or severe Duty pad may work better for you.

EBC Brakes produce an R series sintered pad that offers great lifetime and braking power and an even longer lasting severe duty or SV grade sintered pad for farm or utility applications. EBC also produce a full race Moto-X pad known as MXS which is a higher friction sintered blend arriving with new caliper slider pins in most cases and a fast to bed in diamond ground pad surface finish.

Road Race brake pads

As mentioned above the new EBC Brakes sintered GPFAX brake pads are best brake pads for racing motorcycles and a great solution, not only last well, they heat cycle perfectly and have the highest friction levels know or even possible making fingertip braking easy. Race riders will need to re-evaluate braking markers with these brake pads as they quite literally stop faster than most other brake pad types. When using any new brake pad compound a consideration of the previous pad used needs to be made. A pad containing carbon will lay down a grey glaze on the rotor that needs to be broken down with a scratch pad/ fine emery or abrasive paper to reveal the bare steel of the rotor to avoid contamination of the new pads and low brake effect or judder.

Bedding in new brakes

When fitting and using new brake pads a break in period must be observed riding the bike, with frequent gentle brake applications for up to 200 miles in street use, or 2-3 laps in race use, gradually increasing the brake pressure towards the end of the bed in period. The best just of when the brake pads are bedded is of course totally in the riders hands so gradually build up confidence in the new brakes without leaving braking late (unless in an emergency of course), and disc or rotor condition will naturally extend this brake in period. Badly worn scored or ridged brake discs or rotors will ruin pads and reduce braking even to unsafe levels for many miles and we strongly recommend against this at EBC Brakes.