It is now officially time to learn your brakes. First, pull off the caliper and you the lever to squeeze the puck out till you can pull out the piston. Dump out all the old fluid and wash and dry. Get as much out of the system as you can. Take out the rubber seals in the caliper and then using a dremel with a brass brush head, or some other bristle item, clean ALL of the surfaces inside the caliper payng special attention to the groove the robber seal sits in, especially the corners. After it is all clean, rinse and dry again. Set the caliper aside. Now without knowing what bike you have( I thought it was a 70 something 750)you want to clean the master. Remove the lever and inside there you should see a cir-clip. Now a cir-clip pliers works best but improvise if you must. Once that clip is removed, the piston there will come out. Make sure none of the orings are torn. Clean it up well. Clean out the inside of the master too. If you see any whitish or crusty material inside, get it out. Clean everything very well.
Once clean, reassemble the master, attach the hose and mount the caliper. Now would be a good time to check your hose too for cracks. You only have 1 and it must be good. If you do have to replace it, honda still has hoses I think but if you gotta put down the money, get a braided line, big improvement. I got mine from helusa.com It is an awesome line and the service was excellent too. Galfer is another option.
Now if you really want to make this easy, get a speed bleeder for the caliper, it replaces the old bleed screw and speeds the bleed a lot. Fill the master with whatever fluid. Most will push dot3 but any will work fine you just can mix them. I use a synthetic dot4 and it does not eat paint. As you bleed, squeeze the lever slowly to prevent creating more air bubbles and to prevent shooting the roof of your garage with fluid!
Make sure to NEVER let the master go empty, keep filling it as you bleed. If you are using the speedbleed, you just open it about 1/8 - 1/4 turn and leave it. If you use the standard bleed screw, you will need to open and close it every pump of the lever. Make sure you put a tube on the bleeder that drains to a container.
Once you get mostly fluid, squeeze the lever and tie it that way and leave it a couple hours. This allows the small bubbles to slowly come up and out. Make sure to check your system and remove ANY points where there might be bends that allow air to sit. Once air is out, you can do whatever you want with the brake line for mounting.
It takes time but to give you an idea, my brake lever moves about 1/2 inch before it starts to engage. and after about 1.5 inches, it is extremely firm!
You CAN do this, if you need just take pictures of things as you are pulling it apart.
The ride IS the adventure. The destination is just to get gas!
Locked
