Brake Maintenance

[cbr600_mj]

Hey there another noob question about brake maintenance.

How does everyone prepare their brakes before a race and between races and at home.

Do you bleed the brakes often at a race day?
Clean the rotors w/ brake cleaner? After each session?

Or you set em up and home and that's it?

I have heard that after you bleed your brakes at home you put a zip tie on the brake lever and throttle and pull it as tight as you can. And it will help push the air bubbles out and if there are any fliud leaks you will find out the next day before you take the zip tie off the next day.

I have tied this and it really firms up the feel of the front brakes at track days.

Any other neat maintenance stuff you have would be appreciated.

Thanks in advance!

Mike

[Jeff]

bleed them regularly, change the fluid often...  like 3-4x per year on the fluid. 

Keep a close eye on the pads.

I wouldn't advocate the zip-tie method every night, nor would I recommend cranking it as tight as possible...  All you need to do is bring the lever in a touch to allow any air bubbles to flow upward.

You should also clean the calipers well, every time you change the pads, and consider rebuilding the calipers annually.

[cbr600_mj]

Thanks Jeff!

[Super Dave]

The zip tie is usually something you do when you put on new lines.  Works great.  It's a tool available if you have problems.



Thanks, Gordie!

[GSXR RACER MIKE]

When I helped out the M4 Suzuki race team at Daytona in 2005 I cleaned up the brake calipers after one of their riders had crashed one of their bikes, the entire front brake system was off of the bike as a unit when I did this. They had me use Simple Green and a toothbrush to clean all the dust and debris off the calipers and that work very well. When it came to bleeding the system they had me do a normal bleed then pull in the brake lever repetedly and let it snap back out, what this does is cause the bubbles in the system to work their way up to the resevoir from the reverberation of the lever. It took more than 5 minutes of doing this till I stopped getting any bubbles what-so-ever coming up into the reservoir, afterward the rider said the brake lever felt great.

My freind has a Mini-Motard bike that he races that he had replaced the brake lines on last year and couldn't get the lever to firm up. In his case I found a problem with the way his brake lines were routed, the brake lines were a little long and he had the brake line going slightly higher than the reservoir then dropping back down to the banjo bolt where it was connected to the reservoir. The problem here is that air can potentially get trapped in any high spot in your system that doesn't have a bleeder of some type, we re-routed the brake lines so this situation no longer existed and the problem quickly resolved itself after further bleeding then using the technique I described above.

Just some more options for you. 

[cbr600_mj]

Thanks Mike!

[251am]

Hey there another noob question about brake maintenance.

How does everyone prepare their brakes before a race and between races and at home.

Do you bleed the brakes often at a race day?
Clean the rotors w/ brake cleaner? After each session?

Or you set em up and home and that's it?

I have heard that after you bleed your brakes at home you put a zip tie on the brake lever and throttle and pull it as tight as you can. And it will help push the air bubbles out and if there are any fliud leaks you will find out the next day before you take the zip tie off the next day.

I have tied this and it really firms up the feel of the front brakes at track days.

Any other neat maintenance stuff you have would be appreciated.

Thanks in advance!

Mike

  Get yourself a Mighty Vac bleeding tool-just a hand held vacuum pump. Greatly improves the efficiency.

  De-glaze pads, clean brake dust off calipers, wipe down rotors w/cleaner, fresh fluid in top 'til clean comes out the caliper nip!

[weggieman]

I used to clean my rotors after every race and scuff them with emery cloth just to try keeping them from glazing. Seemed to work fine. The zip tie deal works, I've always pulled the lever back all the way. The snapping of the brake lever works as Racer Mike said but watch out so you splash fluid all over. I've seen some spray pretty good when you do that.