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Front brake service / set up 400/4 advice please

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Johnwebley:
now you have the mechanical side working,you need to ride and use the front brake often,but gently ,just to bed the pad in,

  Although I have twin discs,I only brake softly,and its taken ages to bed the pads in,

 I used DSS own make pads,and they seem very hard,hardly worn at all,

Green1:
I had to rough the DSS pads up to get them to work.But they have been fine since though.

K2-K6:
It's surprising when you take them apart just how much crap builds up in the groove. All clean and reassembled properly they do last quite well with the proper grease used but longer term I think you'd have to plan reasonable maintenance into running them to keep on top of it. It's really road salt that gets them going bad so if that's avoided then they stay in good nick for longer.

Bedding any pads in should take about 50miles of light use just to get the pads lying flat to the disc and any deviations on the disc if it has any wear.
After that to really get pads working properly you've got to take them through their entire heat range and back to cool to prepare them for general use.

I do this by riding and gently dragging the brake to build heat up slowly, then as the whole caliper and disc is warm keep going with more brake pressure until the pads start to smell,  and then more pressure (you may need to run it in 3rd gear to keep it moving along at this stage) until you feel the brake start to fade, ie retardation starts to go down even though you're pulling the lever hard, and the then keep going until it feels like it won't stop the bike ( yes you need to go this far) at this point release the brake but don't whatever you do stop the bike, just ride it gently until the whole system cools down back to normal. You'll they find when you use the brake normally it's the best it's ever been ( this assumes you've got all the system clean and working properly before you start). After this you'll find it gives the best friction power and linearity you can get for that system. Not many people do this properly so never get to see what their brakes will do.

Green1:
The rear brake was non existent on the Guzzi so that's how I bed in the new pads.Now its almost unusable as it is like an on off switch at low speed.

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