Front brakes squeal...this feels like a saga in the making

[pdedse]

To add to pdedse and j3gq's request, could we also please hear from 2017 RS owners and 2019 and later EX and RS owners as to whether their front brakes squeal. The bike had a makeover in 2019 or 2020 and it would be interesting to know whether Honda addressed the issue.

And ... on the other topic, I went to the hardware shop yesterday and by some amazing coincidence ...


Finally, Ferret, who is this active diet of whom you speak?

The brakes on my 17'RS don't squeal. One bike is not a big sample though!

Anyway: squealing brakes is a more and more common problem in automotive industry, due to the new restrictions on pads material due to contaminants on brake dust (that will become airborne sooner than later).

Now there is a tendency to use high carbon steel on the rotors, I guess to help minimizing this problem.

(https://www.bremboparts.com/africa/en/pr...gh-carbon)

So Honda was attempting to stay ahead of the game!

To add to pdedse and j3gq's request, could we also please hear from 2017 RS owners and 2019 and later EX and RS owners as to whether their front brakes squeal. The bike had a makeover in 2019 or 2020 and it would be interesting to know whether Honda addressed the issue.

And ... on the other topic, I went to the hardware shop yesterday and by some amazing coincidence ...


Finally, Ferret, who is this active diet of whom you speak?

The brakes on my 17'RS don't squeal. One bike is not a big sample though!

Anyway: squealing brakes is a more and more common problem in automotive industry, due to the new restrictions on pads material due to contaminants on brake dust (that will become airborne sooner than later).

Now there is a tendency to use high carbon steel on the rotors, I guess to help minimizing this problem.

(https://www.bremboparts.com/africa/en/pr...gh-carbon)

This can only mean you must have gotten one of the deffective ones

Seriously, though, I'm happy to hear that. I'd love for that Honda tech that examined VLJ's '17ex and concluded "all w/in specs" to look at your bike and do the same measurements. Seems to me that's about the only way that one could understand what's going on.

To add to pdedse and j3gq's request, could we also please hear from 2017 RS owners and 2019 and later EX and RS owners as to whether their front brakes squeal. The bike had a makeover in 2019 or 2020 and it would be interesting to know whether Honda addressed the issue.

And ... on the other topic, I went to the hardware shop yesterday and by some amazing coincidence ...


Finally, Ferret, who is this active diet of whom you speak?

The brakes on my 17'RS don't squeal. One bike is not a big sample though!

Anyway: squealing brakes is a more and more common problem in automotive industry, due to the new restrictions on pads material due to contaminants on brake dust (that will become airborne sooner than later).

Now there is a tendency to use high carbon steel on the rotors, I guess to help minimizing this problem.

(https://www.bremboparts.com/africa/en/pr...gh-carbon)

Really? I’m not able to argue from science, but experientially I’ve no evidence at all of that. I’m not surrounded by new vehicles with squealing brakes.

It's a problem they have to deal with during development.(*)

Why honda hasn't been able to make them silent... I don't know. I don't have this problem, and I don't know if it because it's a '17 model so it's been corrected, if it's because RS brakes are different, or it's just that the weather here doesn't trigger the noise.


(*) belive it or not: this kind of issues that can cause complaints by the customer are somehow more important on cheap models than on "niche" models. If 1 out of 10 vehicles you sell have the squeel, and 1 out of 2 customers complain, if you sell 10.000 units, you have 500 complaints, which you have to investigate, solve, maybe make a recall... and peiple making bad press about the product.
If you have sold 50 units, you will have 5 complaints tops (assuming the "niche" client is more demanding), and the problem will be between the client and the dealer.
The first case is a quality problem. The second case is an anecdote.

Last night I was comparing front-end photos between year '14 CB1100s and those of '17ex models to see if there was anything physically different that one could see. The obvious thing is that '17ex models have spoked wheels and the '14s (and jtopiso's "17 RS) do not. I began to wonder--bear w/ me, I'm no engineer--if the structure of the wheel could make a difference; for example does the wheel design--interacting with the attached rotor--make the rotor "behave" in such a way that w/ spokes "squeal happens" and that w/out spokes "squeal does't happen"?
Since I brought it up...

'14 DLX model:


'17EX:


RS model (not sure on year):


Rotor is different for '17ex and RS.