Kawi2strokes.com Forum

Jim, I wonder if your setup had some sort of issue with the friction materials. You mentioned they were stock OEM Kawasaki pads, could they have been some sort of after market pads instead? Along that time, there were a lot of sintered pads with copper imbedded in them, all aftermarket, and none of that type worked well, most over heated and wore extremely fast, even with undrilled disks.

Walms, with a hole that small a diameter, I wouldn't expect a lot of deburring would be needed for OK pad and disk life. The pads more than likely did the best deburring on their own.

With the 1/2 inch holes, they made a large burr on the break out side, smaller, but still prominent on the entry side, and we had to knock the extra off, so, we just did both sides, and went racing.

Dave, it's entirely possible that the previous owner had installed aftermarket pads before I got the bike. I just assumed they were stock, and I hadn't replaced them. They sure did burn up though.

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If it surges, that's normal, upshift.

Sure sounds like after market pads, Jim, like SBS, and EBC's of the day, they used to have heating and extreme wear issues. There were some others that really had problems, even with stock, unmodified disks. I remember seeing a set of EBC copper sintered "organic" pads in a dual stock disk Z1 at an Ontario AFM club race, go from straight out of the package brand new, to completely down to the pad backing plates, in 4 laps. It wasn't pretty to see. The only thing that saved the rider was he only got those 4 laps in that test session, he got out into the session late, and got flagged the session was over, just before it would have gone bloody from a serious crash. EXTREMELY LUCKY.

I sure wish we had the common sense back then to do the drilling, along with figuring out the mods John does to those stock disks like Walms has, the cut holder, etc. That would have made a really great disk back then.

The information is appreciated, Dave. That's a good explanation for what happened to me. Until your post, I really had no clue why simply drilling the rotor caused that big a problem, but it sure did. The pads I put in the dual system I put together after that went tens of thousands of miles, and I replaced them only a couple years ago after the fork seals leaked oil all over them.

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If it surges, that's normal, upshift.

Yeah, Jim, the early aftermarket organic regular, and, sintered pads were extremely dismal, and did a lot of really bad things to themselves, and riders that had bad experiences with them.

you should buy that wheel though, it looks like a really nice alloy laced to a stock hub.

Here's a set I drilled out in high school c1979 for my H2, I remember being scared to death when I hit the brakes hard for the first month or so.. 3 different hole sizes aprox .500, .312 & .200 , It was mainly for lightness and bling, (unsprung weight was not in my vocabulary back then) Used them for almost 4 years before I wrote the bike off.

The accident was not due to brake failure ...I hope? Those disks look cool.

Rather unspectacular...Low sided due to gravel, I was off the bike at that point...but then the bike high sided when it hit the curb and flipped ... Spectacular!! lol