Black sunshine may ride by Friday....

[TomRodgers]

After work yesterday, came home, entered the Mancave, and proceeded to pull the right side caliper back off of 'Sunshine. Some of you may remember i have been having a PITA time of getting the brakes to bleed. I read thru all the posts on air/grease/pliers/hairdryers ect.....

i pulled another caliper off the parts bike and went to work on it.....figured if i screwed something up, it would be on the one that didnt color match.

Dust boots came off both calipers easy enuf.....tried hitting the grease gun to both zerts....no luck. bad bleeders maybe...who knows. took caliper, set it in my vice, snugged it up, grabbed my big channel locks, and gave the piston a light twist....ssssssllllllliiiiiiidddddeeeed right out. Same thing on the right caliper off of 'Sunshine. Guess what. NO SQUARE SIDED "O" RING

:eek: 

Im GUESSING that is why i couldnt get brakes to bleed......NO SEAL and air filling up the caliper!!!

Already purchased kits to rebuild, so will see how it goes.....

[mro]

No seal

Should have been leaking ...
noticeably

Unless they were empty and your MC is not building pressure.


mro

[TomRodgers]

small correction....parts bike had no o ring. Sunshine had the o rings...but the pads, springs and such all had fluid on them.....but it wasnt squirting out...and i wasnt loosing that much from the M/C. it just seemed that NO matter how much i bled the damn thing, there was always more air!!!!

Anyone have an opinion on piston quality... The front/leading edge has rust..no biggie. The 'groove' has surface rust as well. then on the actual piston itself, about 3/16th of an inch IN from the groove there is some minor pitting and rust build up.

The way i figure it (please correct me if i am wrong) if the 'pitting' isnt as 'deep' as the Oring i should be okay to clean it up and go...if the pitting is below the ring, then replace.....i have 4 calipers to hopefully find two good pistons if the current items are beyond salvage....

[mro]

Last set I did I thought were toast. Cleaned off the rust with steel wool and a few pits were left. That was 14,000 miles ago
No leaks, no runs, no errors ...

mro
BTW
did you bleed the MC by it's self first?

[TomRodgers]

yeah i did....even got DOT 3 all over my glasses!!! it has sat for a few months now with air in the system, so i may go through and re bleed everything else and change fluid as well. its cheap and easy...

[Yard Dogg]

If your pistons are good, then try this.

I had the same trouble with mine. If you look in the resevoir, you will see the large hole where most of the fluid flows through, and a small bleeder hole. The idea is for the small hole to bleed your master cylinder. To start with, try turing your handlebars to the left and positioning your master cylinder level from front to back, and slightly angled down towards the left of the bike, to help the air bubbles come up to the resevoir. Before you even bleed your calipers, slowly pump your brake lever while looking down in the resevoir to make sure all the air is escaping. It might even be necessary sqeeze your brake lever and carefully crack your brake line open at the master cylinder to get the air out there too. You should also lightly tap the master cylinder while you are trying to bleed it out to help the air out.

If all of that doesn't work, then you might have to clean the master cylinder. There could be build up inside keeping the air bubbles from reaching the tiny bleeder hole. I had to take mine apart and clean it thouroughly. I wrapped fine steel wool around a drill bit and gave it a light hone. After I cleaned it, I used the steps above and got em all bled out.

[TomRodgers]

will attempt different angles and the tapping thing...but its a brand new M/C....bench bled ...no air between M/C and the fitting that goes to the splitter joint...i bleed each section as i go.