R1200GS LC Rear Brake Pads Replacement @ 10,000km

The R1200GS LC chews up the rear brake pads faster than Cookie Monster gobbling up a jar of cookies. It’s been just over 10,000km and the rear brake pads have been almost completely ground down. Granted, I’ve taken the bike on some serious twisty roads and had a ton of fun. Now, it leaves me thinking if I should get some sintered replacements to last me a little longer before the next necessary replacement, or to stick to organic pads.

Rear mud flap off. Getting the bike ready for rear brake pads replacement.

In the end, I opted for a set of ceramic (organic) pads for 3 reasons:

  1. They’re much cheaper than sintered pads.
  2. Organic pads are easier on the rotors than sintered pads. Since I could replace the pads in 15mins, I’d rather replace them often than rotors.
  3. I prefer the generally noiseless operations of organic pads over the occasional high pitch squeal associated with sintered pads.

While this was my very first attempt at DIY brake pad replacement on the R1200GS (in fact, this was my very first DIY brake pads replacement on any vehicle), the procedure was simple enough and took barely 15mins or so.

R1200GS LC rear brake pad removal procedure.

First, remove the rear splash guard (3 torx bolts, T30), then remove the 2 lock pins holding the pads locking rod, and then slide out the locking rod. The brake pads will fall out quite easily after a few jiggles. It may help by loosening the brake caliper from the swing arm (2 T40 torx bolts).

Rear pads almost completely worn down at 10,338km.
Set of SBS ceramic pads – $25 at LAB. Pictured here are the worn pads.

Installation was simple – just reverse the instructions above. The brake calipers need to be torqued to 24Nm and the 3 bolts holding the rear splash guard at 8Nm – with a dab of thread locker.

Viola! Good for another 10,000km!

6 thoughts on “R1200GS LC Rear Brake Pads Replacement @ 10,000km”

  1. Great article. My three tore bolt holding the rear splash guard are T30. Are you sure yours is T35? In fact most of my tools don’t even have a T35?

  2. My rear still has heat evac grooves at 18,600kms (possibly engine brake a lot?) anyway will replace my stock pads with

    Front, SBS Sintered St Performance Evo 900sp
    Rear, SBS sintered street excel

    What do you think of sbs vs brembo? How about brembo upgrades?

    ***Front, Brembo 07BB3884 x2
    ***Rear, Brembo 07bb0390
    Rear, Brembo 07BB0359

    1. 19k kms on the rear pads? Wow! I’ve since gone with Brembo’s and love them. The previous pads were SBS ceremics and they didn’t last half as long. You’d probably do well with a set of Brembo sintered’s.

  3. My 2014 R1200GSA LC chewed up the rear brake pads in about 6000km. This is very quick, considering I live the Netherlands were nearly everything is flat (for as long as this relates to the surface itself).
    In my case the rear brakecalipers did not come fully loose after braking. Source of the malfunction was the rear master cylinder, which did not come back to the open position, resulting in a higher wear and a remaining pressure in the brake line. Seems that the reuslting higher temperature of the brake makes the prolem even worse because the pressure goes up with th etemperature.
    This seems to be an LC problem in certains early series LC.
    Just in case….

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