The horror
Advisory fix reveals more than worn pads
ONE OF THE ADVISORIES on the FZ1’S latest MOT was that the front brake pads were close to their wear limit – odd, because they’d had plenty of meat on them when I last looked in November and though I’d done 2000 miles since then, it was all gentle wintery stuff. Anyway, I duly splash out on some EBC HH sportsbike pads (£39.99 for both sides) that a mate recommended and get the bike up on the Abba Skylift to put them in. The joy of the Skylift is you can get the bike into a 45-degree wheelie position so the front calipers are at eye level making caliper fiddling blissfully easy – changing the pads is a ten minute ache-free job. The downside is that your motorcycle’s undercarriage is exposed in a way no other lift can manage to achieve. Good grief, what a mess. Despite rinses after every salty ride and weekly washes, the exhaust and collector box are a mass of orange and several jubilee clips and the EXUP valve bolts are barely visible beneath a swamp of gunge. Also, the black paint on the disc carriers is starting to flake in places. A deep clean is in order, but not today due to an important appointment with the sofa, TV and Motogp. The pads on one caliper aren’t that bad with
5mm of friction material left. But on the other side, it’s down to 3mm on both pads. The pistons all move smoothly,
so I don’t know what would cause that. Answers to john@ bikemagazine. co.uk please. In the meantime I’ll keep an eye on them.