chrismejia Posted April 1, 2010 Share Posted April 1, 2010 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 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bznchris Posted April 1, 2010 Share Posted April 1, 2010 Have you bled the brakes? Installed steel braided lines? You may not need to upgrade! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chrismejia Posted April 5, 2010 Author Share Posted April 5, 2010 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. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cegan09 Posted April 7, 2010 Share Posted April 7, 2010 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. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Speedshop Posted April 7, 2010 Share Posted April 7, 2010 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! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cegan09 Posted April 7, 2010 Share Posted April 7, 2010 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. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moderator drewpy Posted April 7, 2010 Moderator Share Posted April 7, 2010 here's a handy resource https://macshot.de/rd/brakediscs.html all the patterns you will ever need Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chrismejia Posted April 9, 2010 Author Share Posted April 9, 2010 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. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sjscucluna Posted August 24, 2010 Share Posted August 24, 2010 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. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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