Hey guys,

I need your advise on updating my disc brakes. I have been tinkering with the idea of applying some Brembo front and rear discs and caliper kits on my bike build, but I'm really not that crazy (or financially able) to buy them at the price they go for. Does anyone know of a kit that is similar or equivalent to the Brembo's that I can use to upgrade my brake set-up?

I thought about drilling my current discs but I am not sure how cool that would really look. Any help or leads would be appreciated.

Thanks

Christian

BTW, this was my inspiration

Wrenchmonkees XS500

Have you bled the brakes? Installed steel braided lines? You may not need to upgrade!

Have you bled the brakes? Installed steel braided lines? You may not need to upgrade!

Thanks for responding BZNChris. I did bleed the brakes and still plan on getting some steel braided lines. Guess I was attracted to the aesthetics of the new discs. But I think you're right, Maybe I should stick to the originals.

bleed the brakes, rebuild the calipers, new pads, should stop well.

a word of warning on drilling brakes. you should never ever drill the disks. drilling adds stress concentrations and the disks will crack if they get too hot. Perhaps it happens more on cars (where i learned this info), but i can see it happening on bikes as well. the only way a disk should have holes in it is if it was cast that way, or it was properly heat treated post drilling. Sorry, it's the engineer in me trying to pass on some information.

Thats odd, drilling the discs is a popular mod that works well on these bikes. Just don't drill too close to the edge! See XS650 brake mods (google it) as the 650 had a very similiar set up. Most modern discs are drilled and I never heard of discs being heat treated (apart from after each hard stop from high speed)or cast with holes!

Dumping the rubber hose will help greatly!

Maybe it really is different in the bike world, but in the car world you never take a drill to your rotors. even ones that come "drilled" have been known to crack under heavy use. It has to do with the fact that you introduce all kinds of stresses into the metal when you drill through it, these stresses want to be released, and heat weakens the metal just enough to let that happen, it's similar to tempered glass in your car. They make it with stresses built in so when it breaks it breaks into a lot of pieces to release those stresses. Any quality rotor that you buy for a car that is "cross drilled" will have been cast that way, or been through a heat treatment cycle to relieve those stresses.

Seeing as how people have been doing this to bike rotors for years, perhaps it really does matter less. perhaps the bikes just don't ever get the brakes hot enough since you are stopping less mass.

here's a handy resource

https://macshot.de/rd/brakediscs.html

all the patterns you will ever need

Thanks for the responses guys. Its gotten my ideas running in different directions. Also, thanks for the link Drewpy that will really help a ton. I just got a second set of discs that I will test the patterns and drilling on. I believe in trial and error, its just a bit scarier being on two wheels.

how did you all go i am planning to rebuild my breaks and add a seccond disk to the left side what do you think.