Well, I had a look at the front brake pads on my Varadero the other week. so I loosened up all the nuts while it was on the bike (to get better leverage on things like the pad retaining pins), wiggled the caliper to push the caliper pistons back into the caliper body and took the calipers off the bike. The pads have plenty of friction material left, so I decided not to change them yet. I did get an old toothbrush and some brake cleaner, push the pistons out a bit and clean off some of the crud that had built up. so the pistons and caliper body were a bit cleaner. I then put it all back together. While the friction material on the pads was fine, I did notice that the back of the pads had a really bad build up of muck on the back of them, but I had a good look and it didn't look like it would affect braking at all, so I just put them back into the calipers. Of course, next day, on my way to work, I'm pootling along the motorway and all of a sudden the brakes start to drag. ...