Yamaha FZ10 Brake Pad Replacement Procedure

I installed EBC HH Sintered front and rear pads on mine. They work fantastic. Everyone doing them on the MT-10 forum were focused pretty much on front only. I started there which was a big improvement, but still was not happy with the rear. I was pressing the pedal all the way down to feel any substantial response. After I replaced them, I was activitating the ABS by the time I did the third rapid slow down from 70 to 30 mph while bedding them in. I highly recommend replacing both front and rear pads. The feel is a huge improvement.

When purchasing pads, there will be several choices. The three main types are Sintered HH, Racing and Organic. Unless you're racing or spend most of your time on tracks, you don't need racing pads. Opinions vary between the other two. Some people believe the sintered pads will damage the discs. Unless you ride and brake really hard, any damage is highly unlikely. It is also very unlikely that calipers overheat and fail prematurely. You may hear this because organic pads tend to insulate causing most of the heat to transfer to the disc, whereas sintered being metallic will conduct more heat back to the caliper body. The quality of our calipers are more than capable of handling any heat transfer into them. Some owners actually use sintered up front and organic on the rear. The reason eludes me. Front and rear brakes are equally important and equally robust. My personal opinion is make both the front and rear as functionally effective as possible, so I have sintered HH installed on all three calipers. They feel great and work great.


Regarding the change out procedure, it's literally a five minute job on each end. Wheels do not have to be removed. There's enough clearance to allow removal and installation of the calipers. No hose connection work is required, so no bleeding either. You simply unbolt the caliper, finesse it off the disc, remove the little cotter keys that hold the pad pins in the calipers, remove pins, remove old pads and reverse process with new pads. Prior to inserting new pads, verify proper placement of spring tab in caliper body. Pay close attention to the brake pad spring tab orientation while taking the caliper off and make sure it goes back the same way. My service manual illustrates this on page 4-47 for the front and page 4-60 for the rear pictured below.  Use a thin layer of grease on pins for pads to slide freely in and out during operation. Apply non-permanent thread locking solution to mounting bolt threads and apply proper torque during final tightening. Torques in foot lbs are: 25 for all front wheel caliper bolts and on the rear wheel, 20 for the front bolt and 16 for the rear. A low torque value range wrench is highly recommended. Please verify correct torque values in your service manual.

Once the job is done, the break lever and brake pedal will go full stroke the first time you apply pressure. This is normal, because the pads are simply being pushed in until they eventually contact the disk surface. Simply reapply the brakes until they feel solid and your ready to ride. On your first ride, brake hard quickly slowing the bike from around 60 or 70 mph down to around 30 mph. Do this several time in a row until you feel a good solid bite on the discs. Do this bed-in procedure on the front alone, then repeat on the rear alone. This will verify that each is completely bedded in. By the time I did the third rapid slow down, my ABS was kicking in indicating maximum bite. Some people just ride normally and let the bed-in occur naturally over time, but until that happens, the brakes are not 100% effective. I recommend the fast method, even on a newly purchased motorcycle.

Note: when putting the rear caliper back on, be very careful with the larger mounting bolt on the front of the caliper when you start the thread. Start it by hand making sure there is no cross threading. Do not use a wrench until the bolt is all the way in by hand. This is a relatively fine thread and is very easy to misalign while pressing the caliper into place. When properly positioned, it goes in easily with very little effort.