New Rotor?

Fast Eddie said:

There’s a little more to it than that IMO.

I can do both of those things (lock the wheel and lift the rear wheel) on my bicycle… but those brakes wouldn’t help me much at 150mph on a motorcycle !

Plus ‘Feel’ is often undervalued. Without that you don’t have the confidence to fully utilise whatever you have.

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You bring up a good point, Nigel. The subjective portion. Just like "handling" and "suspension" there is so much subjective to this. There are those that will wax on prophetically that isolastics cause handling problems, that their suspension is inadequate, yet when you see them ride, it's like watching a parade not even using 10% of the vehicles capabilities… So you're absolutely right about the subjective part. Everyone has a different idea what "confidence" and "feel" is.

I'm gonna use this opportunity to remind everyone reading, to test your brakes. Practice your panic breaking skills. When the opportunity presents itself and there is no traffic around you, practice, using all the breaking power your machine has. It will pay dividends and save your hide at some point in the future. Old bikes and new, practice extreme breaking. It's one of the many weapons that you have available to repel "assassination attempts".
Being ready to use everything you have, and being confident with it, is priceless.

concours said:

You bring up a good point, Nigel. The subjective portion. Just like "handling" and "suspension" there is so much subjective to this. There are those that will wax on prophetically that isolastics cause handling problems, that their suspension is inadequate, yet when you see them ride, it's like watching a parade not even using 10% of the vehicles capabilities… So you're absolutely right about the subjective part. Everyone has a different idea what "confidence" and "feel" is.

I'm gonna use this opportunity to remind everyone reading, to test your brakes. Practice your panic breaking skills. When the opportunity presents itself and there is no traffic around you, practice, using all the breaking power your machine has. It will pay dividends and save your hide at some point in the future. Old bikes and new, practice extreme breaking. It's one of the many weapons that you have available to repel "assassination attempts".
Being ready to use everything you have, and being confident with it, is priceless.

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Early one snowy morning, I was first out on the snow covered roads. I suddenly thought to myself ‘I’ve never practiced braking hard with the ABS actuated’.

So, on an empty snow covered road, I did just that, several times, amusing myself in the process!

A few miles later on a busier main road (still covered in snow and ice) two vhelcies in front of me collided and pirouetted. I had to brake and swerve to avoid them.

The ABS braking practice session could not possibly have been any better timed!

Anyways… that’s just a story in support of your idea to PROPERLY test your braking power.

IMHO most bikes actually have more outright braking power than many owners realise, BUT they have to be grabbed HARD to achieve this. I think that the fact that most brake upgrades provide more power for much less input power is what gives people the ‘improvement’ a lot of the time.

Fast Eddie said:

Early one snowy morning, I was first out on the snow covered roads. I suddenly thought to myself ‘I’ve never practiced braking hard with the ABS actuated’.

So, on an empty snow covered road, I did just that, several times, amusing myself in the process!

A few miles later on a busier main road (still covered in snow and ice) two vhelcies in front of me collided and pirouetted. I had to brake and swerve to avoid them.

The ABS braking practice session could not possibly have been any better timed!

Anyways… that’s just a story in support of your idea to PROPERLY test your braking power.

IMHO most bikes actually have more outright braking power than many owners realise, BUT they have to be grabbed HARD to achieve this. I think that the fact that most brake upgrades provide more power for much less input power is what gives people the ‘improvement’ a lot of the time

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To your point, most of us have been driving a long time, many decades before ABS came into being in common place on street driven vehicles. Remembering that you have ABS, and smashing the brakes as hard as you can takes some reprogramming. Especially as we rotate from modern 4 wheel vehicles, vintage four wheel vehicles, modern motorcycles, vintage motorcycle motorcycles.

For so long, we were programmed to be our own ABS.
Now comes to cool part: rather than monkey see monkey do, like some things, a talented rider/driver immediately is monitoring the amount of inertia/G Force being created by the brakes, the needed/intended closure rate reduction and adjusts accordingly.
Sadly, couple of generations in, people having grown up on video games, lack that portion. You see them flying across the parking lot, or to the end of a street where there is a stop sign, at 40 miles an hour, and then smash the brakes at the last 20 feet. If you're going by, and that blown stop sign can mean your life, that "body" language speaks volumes.

No matter how good your brakes are which my Thruxton had great brake, a car pulling out of a doubled intersection that had give way signs on both side of the intersection and we were right on her when she pulled out, happened so quick we didn't see her till she slammed into us, accidents happen so quick no matter how good your brake can be, we were sitting on 43kmph when she slammed into us so speed was not a factor, a mistake from one person was what got us, death door was opened that day but I slammed it closed, sometimes our fate is out of our hands.

Ashley

Fast Eddie said:

There’s a little more to it than that IMO.

I can do both of those things (lock the wheel and lift the rear wheel) on my bicycle… but those brakes wouldn’t help me much at 150mph on a motorcycle !

Plus ‘Feel’ is often undervalued. Without that you don’t have the confidence to fully utilise whatever you have.

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What I meant was that those items are unlikely to fail due to braking force.

When I brought my new 74 Commando the stock front brake worked great, could lock the front wheel up and lift the rear wheel off the road, but as they got older the problems started to drift in and after a few years they become bad and as the Norton got to about 10 years of braking the front brakes become dangerous, was like going back in time of drum brakes, after many rebuilds to fix bad front brake and 2 situations where they let me down and a slide down the road with 6 weeks recovery from that experience was enough to spend recovery time to fully upgrade the front brakes, no more fu cking around with old design disc brakes a full upgrade was the best thing I spent my money on, my life is more important than keeping my bike original, which it wasn't for a long time before the brake upgrade.
Unless you going to show your Norton in a concourse show condition which means the bike is trailed everywhere to shows only, but riding and the occasional show with different brake set up can still win trophies if you are into that, I build my bike for me and my riding style and it still attracts lookers where ever I park up, my life is more important than bad brakes.

Ashley

concours said:

The Commando rotor is a one piece casting. The center does not work itself loose.

As for magnetism... some hipster buzzword application?

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Brake disc vs. alternator rotor ..