To clarify on the 'warm up' period for the pads/rotors; it takes but 60 seconds of riding 'dragging' both brakes lightly-to-medium to get the heat into them. Then a few good applications :-> and voila. Mash em' from thereonin and you have fabulous braking power & feel. Whilst 'dull' cold, they still function fine, just heavier application required and your brain attuned to that. As I said above, they come up to temp quick smart. An interesting reality I have found (I was going to say 'observation' but I'm not looking at the buggers ;-) is that after solid/hard use the temp in the rotors and the pads plateaus (and no I don't have empirical data on that, I'm a rider, not a fucking brake technician and the phenomenal performance remains a constant so there's no nasty "shit I've cooked them" surprises. Seat of the pants dyno if you will. You know EXACTLY what you're gonna get, application after application. You'll brake for the sheer joy & fun of it. When did you last do THAT? Doodle: When I still had the OEM brake kit on, riding through my local high street in the rain and braking for the lights I had a mother turn, look and pull her young son closer when she heard the God-awful "groan" of the brakes as I groaned to a halt ) They'd shudder slightly too in the wet.
Yep, I remember the slight wobble too. Had a look over lunchtime at the pads in mine, turns out they're Z04 compound. That may explain something!
Ta, but these have got plenty of meat left and no complaints on their performance At £120 a set, I won't be fitting them again though!
So is it necessary to replace the lines when fitting M4's? They are a PITA the way they are routed so if I didn't have to do it I'd be far happier.
Yes you have to change the hoses, take a look at the pics and you will see the locations and angles of where the hoses attach to the callipers is different, and the standard hoses won't work. It's not a big job to do once you know what you need (which you do now it's posted :biggrin: ) Doodle I discovered today who t was that is having their brakes done at snells. It's a mate of mine, going for a whole load of mods including pipe, stiffer spring and ohlins ecu.
I am so very close to buying these callipers and hoses. I assume there will be an improvement even with the standard discs as I can't afford to replace them as well?
Yes, I am running standard discs with the monoblocs and HH pads. They work great. Fitting better Brembo (gold series) stainless discs gives a further improvement, and going cast iron gives another improvement. I would do what I did again (in fact I transfered the monoblocs to my new bike). If you feel the need for the discs at a later date, go for it. If you ever unload the bike you can always swap back to standard and sell them on, getting most of your money back :biggrin: Hope that helps.
It does/did. I've just ordered the Venhill hoses and ordered a set of barely used M4s from the States at a very happy price even including the postage. They are sending them at a slightly lower declared price to try and save me the dreaded charges and VAT.
Envious! I wonder if there's any improvements to the front brakes possible for anyone on a budget....change of pads, that's easy and should make some small difference, anything else? What about the OE brake lines, can they be improved on?.....or the brake line configuration improved?
Pads: Yes you could/can. You can change the pads for the OEM calipers (front) to the Ferodo Platinum, or the ST (Sintered), or better still the CP1 pads. The OEM pads are rubbish so there's much scope for improvement via this route and cost effective. Brake lines: Hmmm. That's a tricky one. Once upon a time when you and I Andy, were young (circa 1861), braided hoses were the way to go. I don't buy that argument so much now. The standard lines are fine, albeit long, due to the architecture of the MTS. Braided lines, due to their inherent design do not 'expand' as much, or very little, in comparison to rubber hoses. That was their design brief. This was good in the 80's when braking systems were populated with single and piss-poor double piston systems; so as to squeeze as much hydraulic pressure into the cali's to squeeze the rubbish pads onto rubbish rotors. It also gave a very 'dead' feel on certain bikes. It's still very popular in Historic racing. As I said above, I don't 'buy' that (braided) argument anymore. Some brake line expansion is good. It's not something Empirical I have to hand, or a graph. It's just in combination with the right Master cylinder piston setup*, the right fluid, the right calipers, rotors and pads; it works well now. *Example: Less is more. Bolting on Brembo M50 calipers (very doable and name your brake pads) and the associated modified brake lines, as you do, will NOT give you better braking on the MTS than bolting on the older M4 calipers. Why? The standard (OEM) Master cylinder (19mm) is too much, allied with the supreme power of the M50's. It's a black/hard art to describe fully. Be that as it may, if you install a (Brembo for example) 16mm Master cyl/lever you now get your 'feel' back with the M50's. Anyway, don't take it from me, go to our Yank cousins forum and search this. They articulate much better than I.
It's about balancing the piston areas of slave and master cylinder (and the resultant mechanical advantage) - changing the ratio changes the characteristics of feel and feedback.
If anyone is after a set of M4's I have a set for sale. Purchased for a project that I've decided to shelve for now. Pm for details.
