TOPIC:

I am having a bit of trouble with my front brakes dragging. Seems the pucks will not release at times, and, will actually use all the free play from the brake handle, and build enough pressure to activate the brake lite. It is not a case of the piston sticking in the caliper, the fluid will not return to the m/c. It is an intermittant problem, so I am thinking maybe there is some "crud" screwing with the system. I don't have acces to a pressure bleeding system, so I am wanting to know of a good way to flush it out. Or do I need to disassemble and clean it out. Seems there is no kit available for the M/C.

Flushing your brake system is fairly simple...

1) Locate the bleed valve on the caliper assembly
(the valve looks similar to a grease zerk). Find a piece of tubing to attach to the bleed valve to drain into an empty container (I use 1/4" clear fuel tubing).

2) Pump you brake level several times, then, hold the lever in a slightly depressed position. Now while holding the brake lever steady, open the bleed valve approx 1/2 turn with an open end wrench until fluid starts to come out of the valve.

3) Slowly depress you brake lever to full compression. While holding the brake lever there, tighten the bleed valve back to it's original position. DO NOT RELEASE THE BRAKE LEVER WHILE THE BLEED VALVE IS OPEN!

4) Once the bleed valve is tightened, release the brake lever. Now go back to step 2 and repeat.

5) Monitor the level of brake fluid in the resevour. You will see it begin to go down. Continue to above procedure until it is "nearly" empty (do not completely empty the resevour!). Now, fill the resevour back up to the fill line with new fresh fluid.

6) Now repeat steps 2-5 again until the fluid coming out of the bleed valve is clean. I usually have to refill the resevour 3-4 times before the old fluid is completely flushed out.

This may or may not fix your problem, but would be a good place to start. This is also a good procedure to learn as the brake fluid should be changed annually anyway.

Norm is certainly correct and his info is spot on but I would like to add that Dennis Kirk sells a thing called a SPEED BLEEDER. This is a bleed valve that has a built in check valve. In other words, there is a ball that sits inside the top of the valve and you can leave it open between strokes of the lever. The ball will close the valve so you don't have to keep shutting the valve as you do with a normal bleed valve. The reason this is sort of important is that it isn't very easy to close the bleed valve on the front caliper while holding the brake lever. Lots of folks will use a rubber band or something to hold it while they shut their valve. The SPEED BLEEDER only works when you unscrew it a bit like a regular valve.

When you go to buy, they will have several sizes for different applications. The size you want for a KZ is 7mm and get the short one if that is an option.

If you are lazy and don't want to order from DK, you can also go to the autoparts store and buy an SAE speed bleeder for a car. Get the 5/16" and you can run a 7mm die over the thread but these are generally too long (they don't seat well) so you will have to swap it out for your old one when you finish bleeding the brakes.

To bleed, all you have to do is keep pouring brake fluid into the resevoir as you pump and that will purge the old stuff as well as can be done. Once you have run a can of fluid through, all the old stuff should be out of the system or nearly so.

one thing you might want to check is the lines, had a problem years ago on a race car where the brakes would be locking up after a hard run. the fliud was not returning , the lines had colapsed inside and would not let the fluid return, if the lines are old this can happen also