revtothelimit - motorbike forum

My Honda is going to need some new front brake pads soon, I haven't bought any motorcycle brake pads for at least 10 years, might even be 20 years, what's a good set to go for, the bike get's used almost entirely on the road (I do 1 track day a year), I don't use the brakes much, but when I do I want it to stop with plenty of feel. The standard Honda pads that it currently has work well, but they're £53.88 each side.

Did Honda pick the most cost effective brake pad option, or did R&D work out the best disc/pad combo for OEM that provides the right balance of wear vs stopping power?

I dunno, but everyone says the OEM pads work best with OEM discs on Honda bikes.

I'd probably buy OEM, or Brembo/Ferodo or some other premium brand. I wouldn't touch Goldfren, Armstrong or even EBC with OEM discs.

The EBC's HH's work well, but wear discs fast, imho.

For my CBF I stuck with the oe pads because they do work very well. Shopping around I managed to get a set for quite a lot cheaper.

I shoved ebc organic pads in the rear.

SBS RST (road street track). They've been my choice for ten years now. First used them in a 765 StreetRS and they felt just like the Triumph ones, which I think were Brembo, not sure, but a bit cheaper. They take longer to bite when it's very cold but I rarely ride at low temperatures these days so that doesn't bother me. Loads of feel.

Ferodo Platinum for me. Used nothing else for about 25 years.

I haven't had to buy brake pads for yonks either and since the Zed has Brembo calipers and Brembo discs,it seemed reasonable to fit Brembo sintered pads. So I did.

Virtually no bedding in required,good feel and power from the off.

SBS for me. Proper amazing

I haven't purchased any for a long time now, but I was a big SBS fanboi - DC for hard track use and Street Excel for road. Neither were hard on discs either....

Super Super Super Corsas.

Honda OEM pads ordered today

Honda OEM is my choice for the best overall performance. I found SBS street pads dire, unless they had a lot of heat in them. It's where most sintered pads fall down for me, but that's because i'm only commuting and pootling along in traffic. Shame a lot of manufacturers have stopped organic pads now.

Brake pads fitted, I think the ones that came out were the originals, weirdly one of them was different to the others (single wear groove rather than three) but still looked genuine Honda.

Le_Fromage_Grande wrote: Mon May 18, 2026 8:56 pm My Honda is going to need some new front brake pads soon, I haven't bought any motorcycle brake pads for at least 10 years, might even be 20 years, what's a good set to go for, the bike get's used almost entirely on the road (I do 1 track day a year), I don't use the brakes much, but when I do I want it to stop with plenty of feel. The standard Honda pads that it currently has work well, but they're £53.88 each side.

If you're satisfied with the feel of OEM Honda pads then you'll never go wrong using these. Otherwise the EBC HH sinstered pads area good popular road pad with decent feel, plenty of bitr and slightly cheaper than OEM.SBS are fine also.

Spurred on by this post I thought it was time to give the pads on the Triumph a once over.

After 8,000 ish miles they are down to about 1mm so not exactly in dire need for a swap but I thought I’d give them a new set.

New ones arrived the other day and I was immediately suspicious.
Nothing 100% jumping out at me but a combination of things.
The packaging looks genuine and matches the Brembo site but was a bit battered and dog eared.
The paint on the pads was a bit scrappy, but since checking on the Brembo site the genuine ones don’t look any different.
So I was more or less settled that these were OK and I was just being paranoid, the paint was similar and the packaging was probably sitting around for a while.

Then checking today the rear of the pads looks good, printing was a good quality.

However there are a couple of anomalies that are bugging me.

Adding to me initial suspicions is the fact that these ones have holes in the backing plate that I cannot see on any image search for these pads.
Here’s the image from the Brembo site.
Then when checking the thickness these have a much thicker friction material part Brembo, I measure 9mm where below it shows a thickness of 7.8.
Both have a 4.5mm back plate (I found that dimension elsewhere).


What do you folks think? Am I being paranoid or are my suspicions that these could be fake correct.


Brakes are not something I want to be anything less than 100% certain about, especially as my bike only has the 1 front disc!

They look a bit fake to me, they're a different colour red.

No idea if fake or not but have heard pads are often faked. I was going to get mine from Sportsbikeshop so I know they were genuine

These are the Brembos I took out of the GSXR a few weeks ago.

They were absolutely shit BTW

My NC750 wears the pads out really quickly-on my 3rd set (of ge uine Honda pads) now at 38000 kms.

The last pair were down to the metal after 8000 kms, a lot of which was covered on motorways. And found this whilst at my mates in Wrocław in Poland.
Could not get any pads for it locally, only place he could find a pair was at thr Honda dealer in Poznan, 180km north. I had no choice but to ride there as it was.
Bit paranoid about pads in that bike now. They have done 10,000 kms and still have a fair bit of pad material on them

EBC on the back of my 600. Recon calliper with a free spinning wheel. 500 miles and they are fucked.