Brakes finally right

[KA1J]

I rebuilt the calipers fore & aft on the XJ11, replaced the pads and had Teflon lines with ss braid made to replace the originals. Cleaned out both of the MC and amazingly, found one of the new SS hoses leaked at the crimp on one end & had to have a different one made up. Once all was replaced I used a Mity-Vac and speed bleeders to replace the brake fluid. All the effort fixed the issue where turning the wheel to the left made it almost impossible to push.

More good things coming with the reassembly but getting the brakes done was a major objective accomplished. Got to have excellent brakes!

I'm at the point where all the rehab I need to do is done and now what's left is to reassemble the bike & pray I can remember where all the bits go. Wish I were 18 again so I could know everything...

[mjpxs11sh]

lucky u. i know it must be a great feeling. thats where i want to be. im having rear brake issues, 1st they were not releasing and the caliper was smokin. pulled the whole rear system off bike and disassembled. couldnt find an issue after inspection and cleaning. installed new pads while i had it apart, and now my pedal doesnt have good pressure. im bleeding manually. is the Mity Vac a manual pump? how does it work? sick of taking the brakes apart and not finding the culpret.

[DGXSER]

Mityvac

HERE is a link to the Mityvac site, model 8000 looks like what I got from Autozone for about $35.

For the rear system, it was a must have for me to get them to bleed out correctly.

[KA1J]

lucky u. i know it must be a great feeling. thats where i want to be. im having rear brake issues, 1st they were not releasing and the caliper was smokin. pulled the whole rear system off bike and disassembled. couldnt find an issue after inspection and cleaning. installed new pads while i had it apart, and now my pedal doesnt have good pressure. im bleeding manually. is the Mity Vac a manual pump? how does it work? sick of taking the brakes apart and not finding the culpret.

The link DGXSER gave you is a really good one. I bought the same mityvac the link shows but mine doesn't have CDs with it, as many bits nor does it have a carrying case. I paid about the same for it too.

Here's my experience though others may not have had the issues I had with it because I used speed bleeders at the same time; my original bleeders had been torqued down by a PO so tightly there were no holes in the sides of two of them so I just put new speedies in for the future.

I assembled the hoses, filler cup and sucked with the vac till I had about about 10 pounds of suck. Then I gently worked the foot brake and each time a little progress was made. I used a 5CC syringe to keep the rear resevoir filled as a baster tip was too wide to fit. Soon I got where the rear and left front were working at about the right amount of pressure but there was still a bit of bogginess to the brake. As you know, bogginess = air in the line...

I waited a few minutes and then went at bleeding again with the idea that air bubbles would start to find themselves and become one large bubble & that would be better to expel. With the suction on the bleeder end I'd loosen the bleeder 1/2 turn and a burst of milky bubbles would come out and I'd close the bleeder immediately so as to not suck too much out of the reservoir & then do the other end (left front or rear. Each time I'd do both I'd then fill the reservoir.

Seemed like there was no end to the bubbles though soon enough they were just so tiny they were more milky with a few large bubbles.

I kept waiting a few minutes in-between pumpings to let the micellized / microscopic bubbles aggregate and finally the pedal became firm as expected. Even so, there were a few more bubbles to come out when I waited longer. I just wasn't in any hurry to get it done ASAP. Now there's no more bubbles and it's done.

Doing the dedicated right front was cake, the reservoir was so easy to observe & fill I just left the suck on high enough to keep it flowing and I'd fill the reservoir as it went down. Piece of cake.

For the next time if there is the need to do all this again (now that I have the speed bleeders) I am though going to make an attachment for doing the rear/left front easier and quickly. I'm going to take a bolt the size of the one in the rear reservoir, drill a hole lengthwise through it and solder/braise a nipple to the top. Then I'll screw that in, attach a hose to the nipple and I'll affix the other end of the hose to the inside of a full can of fluid. This way I can just keep sucking with the mityvac and not worry about letting the fluid level in the reservoir get too low and start sucking air which would mean I'd have to do it all again.

FWIW, this morning I tested one more time to see if any bubbles were in there and yes, there were, very few but a few had aggregated. took one pedal pump on each caliper.

I also discovered the Caliper paint sold by AutoZone is in no way immune to brake fluid, I will have to detail the sloughed off paint with a brush...

Hope this helps.

[mjpxs11sh]

all right then, thanx. im gonna still try to bleed manually cause according to the MityVac site, no one sells them around here. there r plenty of Auto Zones here, but their not listed on the site. ive left the rears alone overnite and im checking them soon. its all i have left to do after all the work ive done and am wanting to get on it. good luck and hope everything goes back together with ease. later

[fredintoon]

- - - More good things coming with the reassembly but getting the brakes done was a major objective accomplished. Got to have excellent brakes! - - -

Hi KA1J,
sometimes the tech posts worry me; the posts that say they've just cleaned the mouse droppings out of their newly found XS11's carbs and will be taking it out to see how fast it will go.
My mind screams NO! FIRST FIX THE BRAKES!