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Hi VFRD, I have a question regarding the linked brakes (no, I will not de-link). I have ridden the VFR after winter pause and I noticed something. If I apply the front brake first, than the rear brake and let go of the front... The rear brake lever falls down by a few centimeters as if there was not enough brake fluid. Normally I would not ask but I don't remember this happening before winter and the bike just had a fluid change. It is either a bad fluid change or my bad memory. The latter being slightly more possible. So can you please go out and try this on your 5th gen? PS: My thoughts are that this should happen because of how the secondary brake cylinder works but I need it confirmed.... You know... I sort of don't want to crash...

I just picked up a 1998 VFR800 two weeks ago and today the brakes virtually locked up on me as I was pulling into my drive after a long hot ride. I say virtually as I was able to use the motor to muscle the bike up the drive but the brakes were so tight I could not push the bike in any direction without engine power. (At this point I am realizing that I should have tried to get it on the center stand so I could tell if it was one wheel or both, duh!) As they cooled they gradually released a bit. I had noticed on earlier rides a little dragging after a ride but assumed that was normal as I have had the same feeling with other bikes, and today it was way worse. I have the mechanical sense of a 9 year old girl so any help or advice would be much appreciated!

So as my stock brake pads got pretty worn out I decided to replace them with some aftermarket ones. I got three packs of EBC brake pads, one for rear and two for the front calipers. After taking the stock rear pads out I noticed that the metal shape supporting the pad looks different than stocks, and the bracket piece that goes over the whole assembly fits a little awkward. Still it seemed to fit in the caliper just fine, that was until I tried to put the retainer pin back in. Turns out the loops on the EBC pads are too low so they hit the top of caliper casing and won’t align with the pin holes... After considering all my options I filed the excess metal [it was just a few millimeters so it didn’t compromise the structure of the pad in any way] and got it to fit, and surprisingly work pretty well as well. Then I moved to the front calipers and the real problem surfaced. Once I got the stock pads out and was about to put the new ones in I noticed that the two small pad pieces were not mirrored, instead they were the same. I got confused for a second thinking I was looking at it wrong or something but no, small pads from ABC actually came both same sided. I than opened the second pack of pads I had and they were the same... So basically someone in EBC made the design for those pads based of Honda manual but never QA'd his work or even bother fitting them to a bike to see if they work. I emailed the company to see if they reply, if not Ill send them back to the seller I got them from over eBay and get my money back, than get new stocks. Funniest thing of all was the big logo on the pad pack saying "support America, made in America!", I'm sure to look for Japanese parts next time... I have a photo of how do they look like included, didn’t take one of rear set as I didn’t think about it at the time.