Rear brake caliper assembly misaligned...

[crazy steve]

I have a 79 1100 special. There is no spacer between the tork bracket and the caliper bracket. Is this right? What spacer #4 is the other post refering to?

It all depends on which bike (or rear wheel) you have. The standards that we're discussing here have two spacers. If you have a special, or have swapped to a 16" special wheel, you only have the one. Same thing goes if you swap a standard 17" wheel onto a special, you'll now need the two spacers.

You also need the 'torque bracket' that was used with the wheel, as it's different too.

'78E original owner

[ikeholt40]

I have a 79 xs1100 special. It is stock (i believe). The rear caliper is very close to the rotor just like the other person posted the pictures above and the pads rub preventing a full 360 degree spin with my hand. I replaced the rear caliper and I took the rear mc apart and cleaned thoroughly, including the spooge hole with piano wire as instructed. It still feels as if the piston is not releasing or not releasing all the way. And it is out of line as mentioned above. There are no spacers between the torque plate and the caliper bracket (is that correct). Should you be able to force the piston back in with a c clamp, or is releasing the banjo bolt or bleeder valve always required?

[thewiz]

I'm not sure if this will be helpful ..

or not ... but ... several years ago I had bought a Std that's rear caliper looked very much like the one in the pic does. In fact, the bike even came with an 8mm box wrench that the PO told me he used to "open the bleeder screw and release the pressure when the rear brake locked up." ...

And lock up, it did too !! ... lol. Once it cooled back down, it would go fine until it got hot and locked up all over again. I rebuilt the m/c and caliper, cleaned spooge holes, changed fried pads and then did it all again ... but nothing worked. I was pretty disgusted with it.

One day Planedick was looking at it and noticed the off-center alignment of the rotor and caliper and suggested that I might try to shim the bracket out and center up the rotor within the caliper slot. Nothing else was working ... all the factory spacers seemed to be in order. I should add that the bike had a custom 18" rear wheel that had been fabbed by welding an 18" rim onto an XS center .. whether the wheel center was from a Special or Std, I have no idea.

Anyway, I bought several different thickness 3/4" washers at the hdwe store and after enlarging the hole in the washers a hair, and some trial and error, I eventually found one that was the right thickness to center up the caliper on the rotor. Never again was it a problem ... stopped and drove great from there on. Soooo ... that's what I did .... FWIW.

[ikeholt40]

bump

anyone with pictures of all the spacers brackets in line? Bike bandit splits the pictures. Any one have an issue with rear caliper locking up, or not releasing?

[thewiz]

Don't have a pic ...

but, if your caliper and rotor don't center up like the one in Hawk's picture, my post above your most recent one explains what I did to repair the lock up problem. I used a thin 3/4" washer inboard (wheel side) of the caliper mounting bracket to center up the caliper on the rotor.