I have had a progressively bad vibration when applying brakes...in front end... ended up changing to EBC rotors and pads... fixed problem.
Those of us that have been doing this riding thing for decades... you kinda know what should be and where engineering was "light" on the specs. Case in point... 1000 lb trike, that can stop on a dime... unlike a 2 wheel motorcycle... you will not fall over with aggressive braking. The Spyders front brakes should be made to handle this normal condition for it. Either the rotors warped or as some would say... the pads create high spots due to thermal changes and that is the vibration. Either way... if an aftermarket product performs under the same conditions... the OEM item is under engineered.
Just my humble opinion based on hands on experience with my favorite street bike ever...
I too have been working on our two RTs with the same symptoms as you describe but the cause is not what you have concluded. In your case you may be perfectly correct but in my case, no so.
Do you have a dial test indicator? If so, I suggest you check your disc runout, if they're not dead true you may be in for the same job in another 10k miles.
In both of our bikes the cause of the issue is the front face of the hub is not machined at an exact right angle to the bearing surface. In our case both hubs measured about 2 thou runout. (0.002") This doesn't seem much inaccuracy but since this measurement is only 35mm (ish) from the hub centre, when the disc is against the surface at a radius of about 130mm then the disc runout will be almost 4 times that error. So about 7-8 thou. Since the max run out is 4 thou then the Spyders, even when new are way out of specification.
The affect of this is that the disc is slanted so when it rotates one side touches a brake pad then half a turn later the other side has leaned against the opposite brake pad. This happens on every revolution of the wheel, consequently the disc wears at diagonally opposite sides while the part of the disc at 90° to the wear has only normal braking wear. This gives the disc two thin patches and two thicker patches which then pass between the pads during braking causing the brake judder.
Further to this, as the one pad is pushed back by the rotating disc the opposite pad will be pushed out by the brake fluid being displaced across the calliper, as the disc rotates the same thing happens in reverse with the result that the calliper pistons and seals are constantly moving also sustaining wear over time.
The next issue is, of course, since the disc is held in place by the road wheel, the wheel is also running with a wobble. I bet your tyre is showing lumpy wear to the tread blocks too.
Then, since the front wheel alignment is taken off the discs or wheels there will be inaccuracy there also.
My solution on both bikes was to remove the hub and machine the flange accurately. Both started with 10 thou runout at the disc and this reduced to 1.5 thou on one bike and 4 thou on the other one after machining. This is to be expected because one bike had covered only 4k miles but the other one was at 15k miles and had considerably more wear on the disc. The final runout measurement included the disc wear.
I find it difficult to believe we have the only two Spyders with this issue, so if you're developing brake judder, my advise is to get a DTI onto your discs and check the runout!
I've made a video of the whole process on the second Spyder to support a warranty claim. Is it possible to post video directly to the Spyderlovers website? If so I'll post it, if only to shame BRP into doing something about the machining sequence during the hub manufacturing process.
Following on from this, my dealer has been very supportive and is supplying new discs, along with top ball joints because they too were completely worn out at 15k miles. He's doing this as good will and his comment to me was if they present these issues to BRP they throw them back to him unresolved. There's something going on there with BRP because these Spyders are still under warranty. Hmmm...
Anyway, there you have it, check your disc runout, sooner rather than later.
