96 R11RT Front rotor Q.

[brewmeister]

0o0

[ANDYVH]

I would think a floating/moving caliper would produce less "feel and response" compared to the floating disc solid caliper style on your 96 RT, and on my 94 RS.

Plus the caliper mounts on the fork legs are meant for solid mounted calipers. What is your reason or goal to change the calipers and rotors?

[MOTORRADMIKE]

OCC could probably do that for you.

[ANDYVH]

I think the idea of the solid mounted caliper is to provide better braking torque capability with better modulation of the brake at the lever. Any motion in a caliper to its mount means all that defelction has to be taken up by motion at the lever before effective braking "feel" is achieved. In essence it means the brake lever has to move farther for the desired response at the brake.

Since the floating disc has limited motion (much less than a caliper) the braking response and feel in much improved. It all comes down to deflection and wated motion. Floating discs are very good for little or no deflection in rotation. A sliding caliper mount could easily also deflect in its mount due to braking torque. Any delfection is lost responsiveness.

This is very evident to me every time I ride my 76 R100RS versus my 94 R1100RS. The 76 has the caliper mounted on a pivot and the caliper is a single action style (pressure applied in the caliper moves one piston out and "pulls" the outside pad onto the disc) which requires a lot of deflection in the system before the braking is really effective. On my 94, the double acting solid caliper has all four pistons moving out together for better response.

[ANDYVH]

The disc "buttons" aren't that bad to change out (I was the guy that wrote the April 07 ON article on changing the buttons). They'll last at least 50,000 miles and I had 100,000 on my 94 RS when I changed them.

I don't notice any chatter from my bike since I replaced the buttons back in 06. If your discs chatter or make noise then the buttons may need replacing.

[mcmxcivrs]

The rotors could theoretically be replaced with solid ones if they were available without any need to alter the calipers. Floating discs and floating calipers serve totally different purposes.

The floating disc design is for controlling the expansion of the rotor when it heats up and reduces the likelyhood of the rotor warping with hard braking. A fixed rotor has to manage the expansion at the outer diameter while being fixed ridgidly at the inner diameter. The floating rotor does not have this limitation; the outer portion is free to expand while the inner portion remains fixed, the bobbins linking the two together. It can therefore survive more extreme heating/cooling cyles with less likelyhood of warping.

The floating caliper seen in some applications is because the caliper is a single piston design or all the pistons are on the same side. As the pads wear, the piston moves out to account for one side, the caliper moves over to account for the other. In a multi piston caliper with pistons on both sides, the pistons alone can account for the wear of the pads on each side, so there is no need for the caliper itself to move.