How To: Overhaul Front Brakes

Guides and how-to's for the brakes, wheels, bearings and tires
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1Oldman
XJ600 Master!
XJ600 Master!
Posts: 3753
Joined: Mon Nov 07, 2011 4:16 pm
Location: Oceanside, CA

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This was done some time back and written up in my Seca Saga but I thought I'd repost it over here where it might be a little more useful.

Installed new seals in the calipers, new pads and new stainless brake lines. Even found a stainless sleeve for the speedo cable to maintain consistency. If you're going to stainless lines you should know that they are a lot stiffer than the rubber lines and therefor less flexible so you need to get the eye orientation correct ane you need to shorten them up slightly. The stock front line is about 36 inches and you can take 3 inches off that to make it about right. The rear is about 17 inches and you can take 1 inch off that.

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Couldn't find a reasonably priced master cylinder kit so I just took that apart, cleaned it up using Drapheus's soda blaster, inspected it, repainted it and put it all back together. The two little rubber cups in the spindle and a rubber boot are the only wearable parts in the system yet they want about $56 for a rebuild kit, pure greed. Other kits with comparable parts only cost about $25 and the rubber cups themselves probably only cost about $1.

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Bought a vacuum brake bleeder from Harbor Freight Tools for about $25 which helped out in bleeding the system. One thing to watch out for is that if you don't pay close attention to the fluid reservoir you can suck it dry and consequently suck more air into the system. Ask me how I know this. One nice thing about it, besides sucking the fluid and entrapped air out of the system, is that when you're finished you can pump it back up and when you remove the bleed line all the residual fluid in the line gets sucked to the trap jar and you don't dribble fluid all over your bike and floor.

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Better to be over the hill than under it.
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