Sunday, June 8, 2008

Changing the cylinder for the front brakes

My front brakes kept leaking. The leak was somewhere from where the piston enters the cylinder (point where the brake handlebar pushes it in), and there was nothing obviously subject to fixing when I took it apart once again recently. I decided to change the whole thing (that is the brake fluid can with the piston/brake cylinder in it), and was able to get the replacement from my dealer.

The job was quite easy, except that both the front and the back panels from the handlebar had to be undone to get to the brake mount on the handlebar (offset screwdriver could probably do the job as well). The "back" panel is the one with dashboard. So not much to show here, there is a bracket with two screws that mounts the can to the handlebar, the electric button that signals the brakes and the handle comes off like I posted before. The brake line is affixed by a single "screw" (which has corresponding holes to mate the can to the line) with a couple rubber gasket washers to keep the seal. It is a 12mm hex nut. My dealer says this nut is the most common source of leak. He says it is normally just enough to tighten it a little. However in my case the leak was obviously in a different location.

I didn't bleed it, just bubbled it up by working the brakes slowly. Slowly so as not to squirt a little fountain out. Changing the tilt helped to bubble it faster. Eventually the bubbles stop coming. So now my front brakes are as firm as new. Wait it did get a little softer over a few days, or maybe I just got used to it.

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