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I'm extreamly favoured to the front brake, however the rear brake is great for trimming off speed, whilst turning, if you misjudge a turn. also it's handy for low speed manuevers

Use both.

i use both when coming to a stop. if im riding and need to slow down a bit i use the back for speed controll, say im going 45 and a car is slowing down so i need to drop down to 40 ill use the back to feather my speed. but other wise i use both.

the person i bought my bike from must had only used the back as my back pads are about totally gone while the front at fine ; \

Both- but I caught myself grabbing the front brake this morning when a bimbo pulled out in front me. I had to remind myself to avoid the "panic grab"

you should use both for street riding. your bike may also thank you

BuzZz wrote:I use both, with favortisim towards the front. Learning the feel of your binders is the most important thing, I use my brakes without thinking, just by feel.... it's a Zen kinda thing, I think. I did eat alot of dirt learning my technics though....

Isn't the whole riding experience a Zen kinda thing until you have to use the binders to avoid a stupid cager?

Just to keep us on topic I use both with aslight favoritisim to the rear when first applying the breaks to get my weight shifting forward - then a use the front binders. When a cop is behind me I use the front break first because the break light does not come on when I use the rear breaks.

I've heard that you should only use the rear when going through a curve,
it seems to work well enough. is there a particular reason for this?

Gilfy650a wrote:I've heard that you should only use the rear when going through a curve,
it seems to work well enough. is there a particular reason for this?

Mostly to keep people from grabbing too much front brake and losing the front wheel. It is possible to use both or one or the other just about anyplace if you know how. Learning how may cause crashing.... fore-warned is fore-armed....

I use all three brakes all the time; front, rear, and engine. All of them every day, but not always all together. Depends on the situation.

Use of the rear brake in corners tends to settle the suspension much the same as acceleration thru the corners does. Quite useful when in a corner too fast. Strong front braking in a corner tends to stand the bike up and change your line more. I try to enter a few corners a little too fast every time out; when an emergency arises you will instinctivly react faster than you can think based on your experience.

When riding at a moderate pace I tend to slow before the corner and then accelerate thru it MSF style. When riding at a fast pace I tend to trail brake front and rear or rear only into the corners depending on how hard I'm pushing it.

All four Hondas I had before I got the GS500s had rather average rear drum brakes and I think I mostly used the front brake only most of the time for my first 200k or so miles. I developed my extensive use of the rear brake along with front and engine braking with the excellent rear disc brake on the GSs. With about 100k miles on the GSs I still haven't outgrown them. It's still more fun to ride a slow bike fast.

you should use both brakes, but I found myself to favour over rear brake which is a very bad habbit. I trend to use rear brake when slowing down at slow speed. Don't grab your front brake when making u-turn, do figure 8, getting into tight conner. This is I believe where most first drop story begin.