Topic: Brake Squeal Noise

[JakeLee]

I have very noisy front brakes on my 78 750K.  I tried the trick of taking the pads off and rubbing them on a concrete floor 3 times to remove the glazing, but the squealing/glazing just comes back in a week or so.  The pads are in good shape, the rotor looks fine.  Do I need better brakes? Any suggestions?

[eldar]

well you can put on a brake compound, it is a paste, and that can help. I dont know about doing that though since we only have one brake on the front. Are there little grooves that go around the rotor? If there are that can do it, only a rotor cut would help that. If your pads are old that may cause it as well.

[JakeLee]

Hmm...rotor looks good.  When you say old, do you mean physical age?  Wear wise they are great, but I am uncertain as to their age.  The bike was a gift from the father-in-law!

[fergie]

There are a couple of things I've done to my 550 to keep the noise down.1ST remove the pucks and put some "disk brake quiet"or similar product on the contact area of the back of your puck,(where the piston touches the backing plate of your pad).2ND you can file the leading edge of your pucks about a 1/8 of an inch on a 45degree angle,also clean your disk with  disk brake cleaner .Both products I mentioned can be purchased at any auto parts store.good luck, Fergie.

[cben750f0]

check that the pad on the piston side has the nylon ring behind it... this was an attempt to get rid of the squeel.... if not get a set of pads with this ring... i drilled my discs, and that stopped the squeel, removes the dust from the rotor.

[cb750_chris]

That file the edge trick sounds like a winner to me.  Similar to what I do to bicycle brakes by canting the rear of them out slightly. 

Make sure the pad can move smothly in the caliper as well.  For brakes with those guide clips I make sure they are really clean smooth and lubed.  Any binding of the pad will have it contacting  the disk heavier on one side making it squeel.  When you press harder the pad goes straight and the squeeling stops.  Make sure everything is clean and it won't bind or squeel at all.  It will just go straight against the disk. 

[Spear]

Don't you guys know how much money Honda spent in its Research and Development Department, to get those front brakes to squeal like they do? Don't undo all that good work. Seriously though, another solution to the problem is to 'cut' the pads in half. Using an hacksaw, you cut a fine gap into each pad (along the line of rotation of the disc - in other words parallel to the ground) down to the wear level indicator. This will effectively disrupt the harmonics component of the pads and give you 2 slightly smaller pad areas on each side of the disc. It also gives you a brake dust evacuation channel - one of the causes of the noise.  Last year I was on a ride with my brothers, and leading the run at one stage. One of my brothers said that my brake light wasn't working (just loose - fixed it there and then) but he said he knew when I was braking because he could hear the front brake squeal. Not bad from 15 yards away and at 60 mph - and in the rain. Either the front was louder than I thought or he has bloody good hearing.

[cben750f0]

i used to find that when the squeel got louder, my brakeing got worse....... The best thing i could do was rough up the pads every two weeks and make sure i had the nylon ring behind the pad, then i drilled the discs.... fixed.... and it actually stops in the rain now...