Brakes

[Shotgun]

I have 40000 on my 98 standard.  I'm close to needing front brakes and I have the pads so I figure I may as well put them on.  Any tips?  Is it just a matter of changing the old pads out for the new ones?  Thanks for any advice.

[hubcapsc]

Any tips?

 

Take both the calipers off (it is so easy on the front), take them all the way apart, blow the pistons
out of the calipers with compressed air (careful), clean everything like new including the pin the pads slide on,
replace the seals (easy, cheap, lube them with brake fluid), put anti-seize on the threads of the pad-pin and
its little threaded cover when you put it back together, and put caliper grease on the pins that the caliper
floats on.

Look what might be in your master cylinder (bleghhh):



Look what was in Henry's rear caliper:



When your front brakes are AWESOME again, you'll be happy!



-Mike

[NITRO]

Any chance you have some sort of picture-by-picture of the caliper disassembly, cleaning, and replacement of the seals?

[hubcapsc]

Any chance you have some sort of picture-by-picture of the caliper disassembly, cleaning, and replacement of the seals?

Sorry, not much... there's hardly anything inside of a caliper. You need to be careful blowing the
pistons out with compressed air... I use safety glasses, some residual brake fluid usually comes
squirting out in some random direction. The pistons might also come out like bullets if you're not
careful... I jam a couple of one-bys (anything similar would work)  up in there, it serves two purposes...
it keeps the pistons from coming out like bullets, and also, if just one piston came out, the other piston
could still be stuck down in there and the compressed air wouldn't have anything to push on. After the
pistons come out some, I take away one of the one-bys and blow the pistons out further. After that
the pistons can be removed easily by hand. The one-bys in this picture are a couple of old pieces of
tongue-and-groove flooring. I had blown out the pistons a little when this picture was taken, you can
see the ring of crud (and there was more) that would have been pushed up into the caliper if I hadn't
blown out the pistons and cleaned them.



After you get the pistons out, clean them and everything up like new. I use 1500 grit wet dry sandpaper.
There's not much stuff in a caliper, it might be scary the first time, but the seals are just a couple of
rubber rings, the little booties are just... little booties  ... there's not much in there. Putting the fluid
back into the system and bleeding is a bigger deal than rebuilding the calipers.



I have an old trigger valve  nozzle of my father's that fits on the end of my compressor hose, it is meant for
blowing air. I just jamb it into the hole where the bleeder valve was in the caliper to blow the pistons out.
A lot like this, probably easy to find... before I had a compressor, I took my calipers over to the neighbor's
and used his. I had some really dirty calipers with stuck pistons that his little compressor wouldn't
blow out once... the man in the machine shop down at NAPA let me blow them out with his giant
compressor.



Once I forgot to clean the pin that the pads slide on, causing the new thicker pads to have to slide on
a dirty part of the pin, this heated my rotor up a little, but probably was only a temporary
problem that would have cleared itself up. I always clean the pin good now...



-Mike

[NITRO]

Thanks, Mike, I appreciate it. It really doesn't look like too bad of a job. I assume that over 10+ years of stopping, mine are bound to have plenty of grime in them though the are still stopping well.

[Ricky-D]

Although age can be a factor in needing to rebuild the calipers, mileage is also a factor.

40k miles is a low and rebuilding the calipers is really not necessary. Maybe flushing the fluid and replacing with new is a good thing to do.

Replacing the pads only is a simple operation and going through a complete rebuild is excessive in my opinion.

***

[hubcapsc]

Although age can be a factor in needing to rebuild the calipers, mileage is also a factor.

40k miles is a low and rebuilding the calipers is really not necessary. Maybe flushing the fluid and replacing with new is a good thing to do.

Replacing the pads only is a simple operation and going through a complete rebuild is excessive in my opinion.

***

Our bikes are dinosaurs... Henry's Valkyrie doesn't have near 40k on it... I'm not sure how many bottles
of fluid we would have had to put through his system to flush this goober out  :



"rebuild" is kind of a buzzword, I'll just say I'm taking mine apart and cleaning it up every time
I change the pads from now on, it is easy and I don't want to cram the ring of crusty goop that is left
on the pistons (even if you clean the part that is sticking out) back into the caliper even once...



This wouldn't address the goobers but I wonder if you could take the pads out and squeeze on the
lever and push the pistons out far enough to clean them all the way? I'd probably make a big mess
if I tried this... remember, brake fluid eats paint...

-Mike