Please pardon our dust while we improve the website over the next few days.  If you need anything please feel free to call 616-301-2888 or email Mike.  Thank you!

Q & A: Brakes Fixed

John -

' Didn't expect to be writing back this soon, but I had a couple of hours
this afternoon and WOW, VOILA, EUREKA, and lots more! I started with the
adjusters, doing what you said. The RR adjuster still bothered me - I
couldn' feel the 'detents' every 90¬?, so I pulled the RR drum. Now here
comes the real fluke: what's that inside the drum? Why it's a brake
lining! The lining had completely detached from the forward shoe. It was
at the bottom of the drum when I took it off - presumably it rotated as far
as the other shoe would let it - but that meant no shoe for the adjuster to
press against. To keep things in balance, I replaced shoes on both sides.
Now I really have brakes!!! Perhaps it's a combination of several previous
problems but with new MC, new calipers, new servo, and now new shoes, they
feel much better than they ever have.

There's a moral here somewhere. When something goes wrong I tend to
replace everything. And on more than one occasion, the solution has been a
fluke - something simple that I overlooked. A lot of this was unnecessary
I'm sure, but then there is some piece of mind in knowing the entire brake
system is tip-top. The next time I need a rebuilt late-model MC, you know
where it's going! Do you do servos also? I didn't see it listed in your
bench services.

But never in a million years would I have guessed a loose brake lining.
And if I were to guess what the symptoms of a loose lining might be, I
would suspect some strange noises from that drum - NOT a soft pedal.
Strange - that was the wheel that was locking up first in hard braking. Go
figure...

Again, thanks for all the attention!

Allen

ALLEN!

We've only seen loose linings, as you've described, several times.
Very unusual, to say the least!

Glad it's all done! ... read more