My OEM brake pads appear to be wearing more on the inside of the front pads and inside the back brake pads. My question is can I rotate the front pads to get more out of them? I'm interested in hearing if anyone else is having the inside or outside of the brake pads wearing faster, not by much but is noticeable.

Thanks!

 

Can't tell you about the uneven wear but rotating the pads is not a good idea

 

Yes, both my 2016 Ultra Classic and my current 2018 RGU do this, uneven wear on the brake pads. Not much, but you can easily see it. This is perfectly normal. Most motorcycles are like this.

Remember that the factory spec brake pad limit is .016" thickness. This is amazingly small. My most-worn front pads look just about worn out to my naked eye, but I put a .016" feeler guage against it, and there is puhlenty of pad left.

I would just wait until the most-worn pad gets to near that, and then replace them all.

 

glad this came up my front brakes have been grabbing a bit not smooth at all now i looked at the pads and they seem pretty think but thinner a bit on one side then the other , thought this could be the cause???

 

+1

 

When you replace your pads, be sure and clean your calipers and pistons well to ensure they’re not getting hung up which would cause even worse pad wear and poor lever action.

 

Yep flipping pads is done all the time ...just clean a chamfer pads. Been swapping out to EBC sintered...rough on rotors but stop. Cold ,wet,hot,dry......

 

Don't move around the pads.. Ever here the term seating the pads? Once they are seated they are broken into the caliper and disc. The caliper is typically not in perfect alignment with the rotor. Once they are seated in everything lines up and the brakes function their best. Moving them around the way the pads match the disc is gone. If the alignment is not the same and can cause drag on the rotor, lose braking capability due to misalignment and even burn up the disk rotor. Heck sometimes due to a sticking caliper piston / poor alignment, cause a rotor to drag to the point where the pad simply needs replacing due to uneven wear.

Now if you pull the pads, mill them so they are flat, you should be able to get away with it.. If there is anything left.

 

On other bikes, over the years, I have usually rotated the pads around to equalize wear.

But I haven't done this on my two Harleys. These HD pads wear long time. I got 25k miles out of the original pads on my 2016 Ultra Classic, and that was replacing them BEFORE they got to the .016" limit. Rotating pads around in the calipers is a lot of dirty work for no discernible improvement in operation. And you could induce a problem by doing so. Even though, having done this for decades on other bikes and never induced any problem in operation, it didn't really help anything. Maybe I saved a dollar on new pads. But I doubt it.

 

Thanks for the replies everyone. I'm going to just replace the brake pads instead of rotating them around. I'm older and have more money but I'm still a cheap bastard! LOL