So I got my freshly rebuilt Nighthawk 700s registered this morning, maiden voyage around noon, ass on the pavement in the first 2 miles... It's a shame there is not an emoticon for part of you wanting to destroy everything with a baseball bat, while the other part of you just wants to break down in tears.
So anyway while I was riding I started to get a lot of resistance when I let off the clutch, I feel like more and more of an idiot when I realize how long it
should have taken me to acknowledge sticking brakes. I thought it was the rear because I had just replaced the fluid in the front, and assumed I had screwed up the back when I adjusted it. I tapped on it without avail, made sure it had fully returned, and then the front wheel hopped with a nice steering jerk. By the time I could think, "time to get off the road" the wheel grabbed again and the steering jerked to full right. I had tank guards so the engine was saved, some more damage on the muffler, demolished front fairing and instrument cluster, some skin off the knees, destroyed my gloves and damaged my brand new riding jacket. Ego was heavily damaged by the 4 police cars and fire truck completely blocking traffic on a 30 MPH city street.
The front brake was still locked up when I righted the bike and the lever was as hard as if it was at the bottom of the stroke indicating a lack of release in the master cylinder. After I bled the pressure at the calipers and resealed the bleed valve it worked fine. While starring at the bike back in my grandpas shop he told me his theory of why they locked up. That theory being that the lever was holding the piston closed just past the return hole, with slight braking the heat caused an increase in brake pressure, which would not return. I took the lever off and it was holding the piston down about 2-3mm, but if this was the case why would the brakes ever release? Is it more likely that there is a piece of debris in the line that was just pushed down toward the calipers when some of the fluid was bled out? But at that I flushed the brakes out about a week ago with probably 3x the amount of fluid it would have taken to fill the lines from empty, so I would have thought they would have been clean.
The bike will probably be fixed in a few days but my knees will take a week or 2, definitely looking into riding pants for next time, but Kansas only allots so many 60 degrees days in January so it could be awhile before I get out again.
Thoughts?
-Nick
