Yeah, they're supposed to be tight like that - visually speaking. Here's some pics I just took.
This is the '14 Hayabusa:
View attachment 1629847
And here's the '14 Strom 1000:
View attachment 1629848
Or maybe it's the other way around, but the point remains valid
dear?
both calipers are faulty i would say.
because at both the outer piston came out a lot while the the inner stays deep inside the caliper.
if anything is well maintained both pistons should come out same amount.
so i would have a very strange look at the two calipers.
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and to the question what clearance the pads have to have to the disc is easy.
as low as possible, because the bigger it was the more volume of the fluid you have to pump via the master and sometimes the masters come to their end and you have to pull/step the hand-lever / foot-pedal a second time to get the brake working.
and THEN you get this kind of eyes
i suggest the pad/disc clearance at proper working calipers should be between (not bigger than) 3/100 and 5/100 mm (less than 10/100 = 1/10)
and such a small gap you can´t meassure bye eyes, i would say.
calculate the two volumes you have
1. at the master available when its piston does its whole way
2. at the calipers and how much vol. they need to bring the pads to disc contact
and then compare this two volumes
i never measured the gap at proper working calipers / brakes but i tell ya my feeling.
with a gap of, let´s say 2-3/10 , i suppose you would have the feeling to grab into a nothing when pulling the lever / stepping the pedal the 1st time.
the 3/10 mm gap i took from page 6-67 of the gen1 manual where suzuki writes a max tolerance of the disc at
"Front disc runout: Service Limit: 0.30 mm (0.012 in)"
if you ever had a not-flat / little bent disc at a bike and if you pushed the bike 1-2 m and pulled the lever you should have had the feeling of grabbing into nothing.
reason 4 that - the only a very litlle bit bent disc pushes the pistons via the "high-point" back into caliper(s) by the pads, the gap becomes too big and brake never is a brake that second.
i personally had that super bad feeleing
already 2 times at two different bikes while taking the bikes off / down of my bench and it was so frightening and scary - believe in me you never wanna feel this fear !
the bikes speeded up a bit and i feared to loose em out of control - i was pretty near/close to a heart attack.
at last.
both / all pistons (no question how many pistons you have in the caliper)
imperatively have to come out
evenly - if they don't, there is something very faulty (up to be rotten) in the system and the brake calipers
imperatively have to be dismantled and deeply cleaned as I have described it here on my hp.
this behavior you can meet at every kind of hydraulic brake - the type of the bike never matters at all.
and please always remember - your life depends on proper / 100% working brakes.
only 99% is never enough.