Recommendation for front brake pads for a 1978 KZ1000

I'm looking for advice on front brake pads for my '78 KZ1000 Z1R. These bikes did not come with metallic pads, so I'm stuck with the older formulas. Also, the factory pads for the 78 Z1R are no longer available.

I have two reference points. I had a '79 KZ650 with SBS pads (510HF?). These worked great. Nice bite, linear.

My Z1R has EBC FA33 pads. I have never liked them. They have no bite and feel very wooden.

The problem is that these two bikes have such wildly different brake systems that I have no idea if it's the pads that made the difference. The Z1R has smaller diameter caliper pistons, a cable operated master cylinder, and I don't actually know what size master cylinder I had on the 650 as I swapped parts around a few times when converting it to dual disk.

I'm considering just getting some SBS pads to see, but they don't show up in the main catalog and I can't tell if they are still making them. There are parts available here and there, but I'd like to buy something new and current, just so I know what I'm getting. If I buy a 20 year old set from Ebay, how many times since then did SBS update the compound? Is that second set from 10 years ago the same?

So what brands have folks found to work well?

The original pads for the 1978 Z1R are still available on eBay. The Kawasaki link at www.kawasaki.com/Parts/PartsDiagram/144280/1978/KZ1000-D1 shows the front pads as part # 43050-5003. Use that part number to find the pads on eBay and you will see 5 sets. I have found on my KZ650-C1 that real Kawasaki pads work best, so that may be true on your bike too. Metallic pads are not a really good idea with the stock rotors. Ed

While in a great majority of cases I agree that oem is the go-to choice, I wonder about nos brake pads. As Martin has noted on a number of occasions, on drum brake shoes, the adhesive that holds the friction material to the shoe deteriorates over time, with possibly disastrous results. I wonder if the same could happen to disc brake pads as they age?

kzrider.com/forum/5-chassis/609740-are-f...ake-pads-good#795174
Steve

SWest wrote: kzrider.com/forum/5-chassis/609740-are-f...ake-pads-good#795174
Steve

I had already read that thread before I started mine. I'll toss an old one of mine back at you, where I pretty much asked the same thing.

www.kzrider.com/forum/5-chassis/591886-sintered-brake-pads

I'm reluctant to use metallic pads. I don't think the issue is with the rotors. The 1978 and 1980 rotors look like they are basically the same (by 1980 they were using metallic pads). As I mention in my thread, the bikes that came with metallic pads have an insulator on the end of the caliper piston to allow for higher pad temperatures. The older bikes like mine do not.

I'm also reluctant to use a 40 year old NOS set of original pads. I'm not totally opposed to it, but it was hoping that 40 years of material science would have come up with a better solution. But maybe they stopped developing organic compounds once metallic pads become popular.

Another interesting thing I note in that old thread is that the '78 Z1R used a different pad part number than any other bike except for the '78 KZ650SR. Even the '78 twin-disk LTD used a different pad. The other thing that the '78 Z1R and SR have in common is that they both used the smaller 38mm piston. I guess that suggests that Kawasaki thought pretty hard about the compound they put on the Z1R.

I'm still hoping for something modern.

It's been a year. No damage and the brakes work great.
Steve