Need info on 650 C1 rear brake pads

For the past couple of months I've had my 77 650 C1 (aka: My brillo pad special) parked in my front room. Has worked out pretty good, whenever I'm bored I have something to mess with without having to freeze my butt off. A few weeks ago I decided to pull the rear wheel off and really clean it up good and polish off the 30 years worth of "patina" on the rear mag wheel. Looks good so far (I like shiney) only problem is when I pulled it apart the outer brake pad material just fell off from the metal backing, no problem, got to buy a new pad set, or so I thought.

I now need to get this thing back together in order to be able to roll it back out on the porch and I don't want to put it back together unless I have new pads for it. So last week I called Brake Planet out in California and ordered a set of pads. Their website showed a set of pads that did not look like what I had, so I very carefully described my pads to the guy on the phone. He assured me he had just what I needed. Pads showed up on Saturday and they are the same pads they have on their website . Today I tried calling them and I'm not getting an answer.

As a "plan B" I checked the Kawasaki website. They are showing 2 different calipers used for my bike. Apparently from frame#1 thru frame #023100 they used the type of pads I have and then they changed to the type the guy sent me. I called the local dealer to see if the pad was still available and was told it was a good number COST = $105.68:sick: :sick:

Has anyone out there run across this or can anybody suggest an alternate source for this type of pad? I hate to sound cheap but I paid less for the entire bike than the dealer wants for one set of stinking brake pads.

are they the toploading pads held in with 2 pins or are they the same kind used in front caliper where you have remove caliper to install them?

They are similar in shape to the front pads and yes you have to remove the caliper to install them. The pad on the inside is held in with a 6mm screw and there is a disc with a hole in the center.

sounds like a front brake caliper to me,let me see if i have any front brake pads.i used to have some spares unless i gave them to skipper76 in missouri.ill take a look later tonight;)

Ummmmm....

Are these what you need?

www.z1enterprises.com/detail.aspx?ID=322

It's what I use on my rear disc.

Those round shaped pads were used in a few other Kawasakis of the same era. A 1976 KZ900B1 LTD used them as well as the 77-78 KZ1000B1 or B2 LTD. If you try to order brakes for one of these LTDs you should get the right ones for sure.

there ya go;) this is the top loading style caliper i was talking about

mariozappa wrote:

Ummmmm....

Are these what you need?

www.z1enterprises.com/detail.aspx?ID=322

It's what I use on my rear disc.

Yep that's what I need, I checked Jeff first and didn't see these, turns out they were on page 2. I just saw the square ones on pg1 and stopped right there. Thanks guys now I don't need to sell a kidney so I can shop at the Kawasaki dealer.:laugh:

I put a set of these Vesra's on a 1976 KZ900LTD and for some odd reason with the caliper pistons all the way retracted into the calipers, with the new pads the disc was wider than the available space between the pads??? And yes, everything was fully seated and assembled correctly.
I had 3 choices, either sand the pads thinner so they'd allow the brakes to work as designed, ride around with the brakes always "on" until they wore down to provide clearance, or pay the $$$ for factory Kawasaki pads. I chose the first option since this 900 was a real POS.