Front brakes dragging...

I found out the hard way. Never ride if you feel the front brake draging or getting tight. I felt the lever and it had no play and felt hard. The front brakes were draging some. I think the dragging caused the brakes to heat up I gave it a little extra gas to overcome the draging.
I woke up in the hospital with 9 broken ribs, broken collor and sholder bone.

I was not going 10 mph and have no memory of what happened. The police thought the trans. froze up. The front brakes just locked up and I guess I was body slammed on the asphalt. There was NO for warning. I now know what a bug feels like :blink:

Man rgpbeme that really sucks! Now that you have me completely scared I'm sure to have a great ride to work. :huh:

Seriously though, thanks for sharing that info. I will be extra careful for sure. I changed my brake fluid and bled the brakes yesterday. They feel better just pushing the bike in the garage. I will test ride it later today.

Well I made it to work today in one piece. The brakes seem to be working much much better. As far as I can tell they are not dragging or sticking anymore. The lever is nice and firm and I can only use two fingers if I want.

I'm sure I still need pads which I will be doing soon. I bet it will stop really good once I do those.

When my thing happened I had no give in the bake handle. After it sat at the tow lot a couple of days they brought it home snd rolled it in to the garage.

I tried the brake lever and it got hard and stayed hard the first time I tried it. When ir sets a few days you can roll the bike again.

I haven't gotten to take anything apart yet. If you have play in the squeezer then it is releasing

I would type more but my ribs hurt :ohmy:

Post edited by: rgpbeme, at: 2006/07/05 19:31

Hey I'm curious what type of bike you have rgpbeme? Mine seemed to have the same symptoms prior to my fluid change. How old is the fluid in yours? Once it starts to gel and get crusty I imagine it blocks whatever return valve allows the fluid to flow back to the master cylinder.

I can't beleive how much better my brakes feel. I always knew they weren't doing that well, but I put up with it for a long time because they still worked. Now they really feel like I can stop on a dime. Nice and firm action. Like I said, after putting in new pads they should really be something.

Hi The bike is a 1979 kz 1000 mk 2. I had just got it. It has always been inside. It has 25000 miles on it. I only had the bike 12 min. when it locked up.
The bike looks like new and thank god I was going real slow when it happened. The other good part is the bike has a vetter fairing and case gaurds. It put a little scratch on the faring trim edge and bent the case gaurd a little. It did no damage to the bike. I would have just died if both me and the bike got totaled:side: