Total Motorcycle Community Forums

Hey folks,

Changed the brakes (front and rear) on my 04 Vegas the other day. Today I was riding down to a friends house, and when I got there I noticed my bike wasn't stopping. The rear rotor was instantly-cook-an-egg hot. Well we bled the frotn and back brakes. Took it around the block and only used the front brakes, come back and the rear rotor is way hotter than it should have been for not using them. Bled the rear brakes again and opened up the caliber a little bit, drove it around the block and used front and rear brakes, come back, and it's instantly-cook-an-egg hot again. Long story short, they're on their way to FL while I'm sitting in his living room waiting on my wife to drive 30 minutes to come get me.

What's the problem with the bike? Do we need to pull the caliper off and squeeze and release the piston a few times?
Ideas??
Thanks
Mike

Sounds like your piston is getting stuck and not releasing. But it's weird that it started when you changed your pads. My guess is that the pad isn't properly positioned in the caliper and is getting stuck rubbing on the rotor.

I know it may seem obvious but it does happen and don't take it as an insult to you. But are you sure you have the right pads? At the shop the other day one of the techs spent an hour trying to put in pads that looked just the same as the old but were just slightly off.

Nothing seemed obviously different about the pads, and they SHOULD be the right ones.

We're going to take them off later in the week and see what the deal is. I'm thinking it's the piston, but it could be the pad not seated in the caliber right, or it COULD be the wrong pads, anything is possible and stranger things have happened.

I'm just worried that the rotor could be warped now...

It's possible but bike rotors are pretty hard to warp usually. Just as an experiment, the piston should be able to be squeezed back in by hand. If it's not possible with a strong guy I'd say a caliper rebuild is in order.

Thanks, Wrider. We're going to look into it this week I hope. Today was the only day I had available this week to ride to it's going to have to wait until next Sat. or so.

So far we've just used a small pry bar to depress the caliper, didn't have time to take it off, but we'll see.

Wife is here, thankfully. His thermostat is set to 82 and I can't get it to change!!

Thanks again
Later