Are brake pad pins painted from the factory?

[BigD_83]

I've been going through some brake maintenance, and I am pleased that someone spent time before me to address them. The seals are more supple than I would have expected, and there wasn't much scale, etc on the pistons or in the caliper bore.

I've cleaned up 30 years of grime, Evaporusted them, and used very fine emery paper to give them a brushed appearance.

Are they (brake pad pins) normally painted/powdercoated from the factory?

Is grease enough to keep these suckers from rusting up, or should they be covered?

[LarryJ]

Just rerplaced my rear pads over the weekend. My bike is an '82 1100 & it didn't look like those pins were ever painted or coated. I had to use WD-40 & vise grips to get them out.

[7981GS]

Wire brush them clean and apply a layer of brake grease on them.
The pads are SUPPOSED to slide on them.

Eric

[BigD_83]

Thanks.

When I was cleaning them up it looked like there was a dark coating on them, but I just couldn't tell whether or not it was old and dry grease, dirt, oil or what not.

I had a *scary* incident the other morning when I stepped on the rear brake, just testing it out in the lane before hitting the main road, and...nothing. Same feeling as always, but no stopping power. It was raining cats and dogs at the time, but I had to be somewhere, so I made my 20 mile return trip with the front brakes.

When I got home, I tried the brakes again in the garage, and there was no movement of the piston. I let it sit to dry out, and when I came back to do the maintenance that was planned for a while, the brakes were holding again.

There was a small tear in the boot, and a wee bit o' scale, but nothing crazy. They actually look pretty good- seals were still supple, no pitting. I think I have the rare GS that a PO actually did some maintenance on.

I'm still trying to figure out the lack of stopping power. My current working hypothesis is that water made it's way through the small tear in the dust boot, swelled the scale and grime and caused the piston to "seize" in the retracted position. When they dried out, everything went back to normal.

While I'm waiting on new parts, I'm getting it cleaned up, repainted, and greased.