EBC produce organic brake pads and sintered. There is a price difference which sometimes determines riders selection as the organic pads are significantly lower in price than sintered.

The main point to remember is that organic brakes wear quite a lot faster than sintered. It is not abnormal for rear brakes in organic to wear out twice as quickly on big twins as sintered pads. This is due to several things. First of all, the organic pads are softer and designed for customers who prefer the “feel” of organic brakes and their very low abrasion on such as custom or chrome plated brake rotors. Secondly, the wear rate on rear brakes on big twins is anyway much faster than fronts. Because of the weight distribution on custom big twins being heavily biased to the rear and the popularity of using the rear brake more than the front, history has shown us that rear brakes on custom big twins wear out faster than fronts.

Also, many custom motorcycles have front end arrangements built entirely different to Japanese sport bikes and the available braking power on the front of the motorcycle is actually less than the rear.

A good combination in our experience is to use organic pads on the front calipers and sintered pads on the rear. This gives a good balance of wear life and braking power. If using organic pads in the rear caliper, wear should be monitored every 3000 miles and pads replaced as needed.

This difference in wear rate has been more exaggerated by caliper design in recent years, where the available friction material or wear life has been reduced by manufacturers who use sintered pads for original fitment. For example, on early big twins, a rear pad had 6-7 mm of wear material available but on recent designs, only 3-3.5 mm of wear material is available due to the pad and caliper design change. This has affected all 2004 year on big twins using stock Harley Davidson® calipers. For this reason, even more so, the organic front sintered rear is the best way to go when choosing EBC pads.