November 25, 2003
The last thing most people think of as an upgrade on their bikes are brake pads and brake rotors. When they wear out or get bent, you simply throw them away and put on new ones. What if you could change a rotor or pad and notice a dramatic difference in brake power? What if it was at a relatively cheap price?
Of course the answer is that you’d be all over them like white on rice. Some pads have come along that work extremely well, usually better then stock pads. Problem is they are either extremely expensive, wear extremely fast or are condition specific. This is a royal pain in the ass if you don’t like having to screw with your brake setup all the damn time.
Enter Galfer brake products.
Galfer is renowned for Superbike braking systems, and has just recently jumped into the fray of the MTB world. They hold the patent on all NON round rotors, and currently license this technology to Magura only.
Their new line of hydraulic disc pads, rotors and lines are all aftermarket replacements for hydraulic disc brake setups. Do you have Shimano brakes with the crappy bulging lines? Galfer has a replacement. Do you have stock Hayes pads that don’t brake as well as they should? The Galfer replacements will stop on a dime. Do you constantly warp rotors from heat? Galfer’s patented Wavey rotors solve this problem.
As of this article’s publishing date, Galfer steel lines are not out yet for every brake system, and as such we have not tested them so we will leave them to a later review. We did however manage to get our hands on a few sets of Galfer Hayes pads and Hayes 8” rotors and were blown away.
To begin with, the rotors each come in a heavy, corrugated plastic envelope. May seem sort of an afterthought, but they gave us a very good first impression. Our first impression upon handling them is that the rotors feel beefy, much sturdier then our stock hayes rotors.
Due to their design, the rotors cool faster and self clean the caliper. This cleaning action is very important on older Hayes models that were a closed caliper and tended to collect lots of nasty crap in them. The rotors also seem to be a bit thicker then stock, although we are told this isn’t the case. Side by side on a glass tabletop they are certainly thicker. They also look pretty damn pimp!
The pads on the other hand, are undeniably gigantic. We had to sand ours down to get any sort of play out of the lever. Once worn down and bedded in though (about 1 hours moderate riding), these pads are simply amazing. They work better then the EBC red pads I have been swearing by for 2 years. After a few months of heavy use, they appear to be much longer lasting as well, as they are still fully functional. They are showing signs of medium wear, where as the front EBC pads on another bike (or control group per se, same fork and frame) are pretty much destroyed.
One caveat, they do not come with the springs that are used to hold the pads to the piston, so make sure you keep your old ones. We hope they remedy this in future, as our used springs didnt fit quite right, were sort of stretched out and were a royal pain in the ass to get on.
Rotors and pads are available for all major hydraulic disc brake systems currently on the market, and are a great aftermarket upgrade if you managed to smash up or generally destroy your stock set. The pads alone will make a significant difference in your brake’s performance, so go ahead and give them a try!
Galfer USA
