Sintered rear brake pads on LC GS.

[Nick V]

This goes back to the protracted Organic vs. Sintered debate that took place a while back.
I did contribute to the discussion at that time, but now I can't find the thread.

I'm not sure if I'm half- or fully-wrong about my earlier viewpoint, and I'll explain why: last week, I pulled off the rear caliper on my LC for a close look at the pad thickness levels. What I saw was not a set of organic pads - they were (and still are) EBC sintered pads.
There is no trace of scoring or accelerated wear on the rear brake disc. It's wearing with total uniformity, and the rear brake performs admirably, wet or dry.

So, I'm not sure at this point what may be going on with this particular bike.
It was a hire bike that I picked up for a good price at 17 500 Km (It it now just over a year old, at 29 700 Km, and due for it's third service). Obviously the hire company owner had issues with rear pad wear and decided to fix the problem. I'm just not sure if the bike is carrying a standard rear disc at the moment - I haven't had a really close look yet, but anyone who owns a bike hire company is likely to have spare parts lying around, and for all I know, a previous-generation GS disc might have been installed.

It's all as clear as mud to me.

 

[mrtee43]

My dealer replaced my rear pads under warranty with another set of organic pads but told me it was only because BMW didn't have any sintered pads available yet.

I was given the impression that the pads will be changed to sintered pads later on.

Personally, I have run sintered pads on every bike I have owned and found them to be really good and never had to replace a disk.

 

[dave hendy]

My dealer told me organic only on the rear!

 

[madmartin]

I replaced my rear pads with ebc sintered only because i wasnt aware bmw spec is organic. Ive had the sintered pads in now for 2000mls plus and all seems well. Keeping me eye on it tho.

 

[Nick V]

I remember there being a few people who'd gone sintered and had issues with disc scoring. It doesn't seem to be a consistent issue.

 

[Neil W]

My old r1150gs was fitted with ebc hh sintered pads from 3,500 miles onwards until I got rid of the bike at 40,000, the bike has now got 50,000 plus on the clocks and is still on original front discs, sounds like if sintered pads are damaging discs they are either low quality replacement discs or bmw has started fitting lower quality discs as standard, work it out for yourselves !!!!!!

 

[yankeedoodledandy]

I remember there being a few people who'd gone sintered and had issues with disc scoring. It doesn't seem to be a consistent issue.

My rear rotor was not scoring, but I measured the rotor thickness front and back and found that the rear rotor was apparently wearing out twice as fast as the fronts using sintered pads all around. I switched back to organic on the rear. YMMV, obviously. After another 5k to 10k miles on the rear, I'll be interested to see how the new pads are holding up and what the rotor thickness is.