Need a little guidance here laddies and Lasses,
My ’03 YZ250WR has the exact same braking set up as the WR250/450 & YZ250 from it’s year so it may be the same across the board.
This is the problem
I don’t rely on the front brake as often as some of the younger blokes I ride with, probably because the old drums we cut our teeth on were pretty useless, but I do like them to work anyway.
I also am prone to a bit of skylarkery with one handed mono’s (flips:blush: ), and stoppies (i shall call them this, you may see them as “crumples”) occasional double peacies over small jumps, feet up large circle doughies and the like, basically I am an old hoon who tries to hone his unimpressive skills base with bike control tasks:blush:
Now I have discovered that the front brakes on the YZ were a bit suss to say the least (the drum on my RM125D was far better:huh: ), so while the forks have been away being “strengthened” I decided to do a bit of maintenance, bled old fluid, completely cleaned and checked front disc, tore the caliper apart, cleaned & greased, roughed up pads (very heavy sintered bronze ones) and immersed them in cleaner.
Put the whole shebang back together, checked lever pressure, not bad so went about my business assuming all would be well done this a hundred times only simple hydraulics anyway, do it right and all works fine, big floatig disc and twin pot should pull this little bike up on a dime.
Well yesterday after finally getting the bike completely back together I asked #1 Daughter to take a few pix of the old man doing monos & stoppies in the driveway:silly: ….you know charge around the back yard, snick into second through the carports and shed get halfway up the concrete and slide forward up the tank and firmly apply brake and increase pressure until…………….NOTHING…NOTHING AT ALL, in fact the closed front gates are coming up a bit too quickly, bike does slow down somewhat and I do manage to uncompress the rear end but this is with my 100 kg frame right over the bars. I stop put the foot down to listen to the howls of laughter eminating from my cheeky sod of an offspring, and not one decent photograph from the little (yeah right 11 yr old- 5’6″ & 72 kgs) so and so, not even one of me kneeling on the seat, one handed, laid over doing circle work, “just checking the camera settings Dad, do it again”, yeah right only got one of them in me a season i tells ya, specially with the midrange hit of a YZ250.
So I have a few ideas but need direction from others who have had/heard/know of this happening elsewhere.
#1-brake pads are very heavy mix of Bronze sintered material, looks almost like no fibrous organics in there at all..maybe too hard or incompatable with disc
#2- the stupid pressure switch that piggybacks off the mastercylinder banjo bolt bleeds off too much pressure?
#3-It’s a Dud setup and they’re all like this from ’02-’05 (are they Slug?) unfortunately my mates ’93 model has superior brakes
#4- I am an idiot and have overlooked a basic issue here.
Fire aways learned compadre’s cause this is annoying me
Mr Blue
