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Honda Varadero Brake Clean

Well, I had a look at the front brake pads on my Varadero the other week. so I loosened up all the nuts while it was on the bike (to get better leverage on things like the pad retaining pins), wiggled the caliper to push the caliper pistons back into the caliper body and took the calipers off the bike.

The pads have plenty of friction material left, so I decided not to change them yet. I did get an old toothbrush and some brake cleaner, push the pistons out a bit and clean off some of the crud that had built up. so the pistons and caliper body were a bit cleaner. I then put it all back together.

While the friction material on the pads was fine, I did notice that the back of the pads had a really bad build up of muck on the back of them, but I had a good look and it didn't look like it would affect braking at all, so I just put them back into the calipers.

Of course, next day, on my way to work, I'm pootling along the motorway and all of a sudden the brakes start to drag. I pulled the clutch in, and yep it's definitely the brakes. They just came on suddenly and started dragging.

Okay, my normal fix for this (whilst on the motorway) is to pull into lane one, make sure that no one is behind me and to apply the brakes hard. I believe that this will help the caliper pistons get pushed back into the caliper body. So I pull in to lane one, but there is a car behind me.

Well, as I'm now beginning to slow, I hoped that the car would overtake me soon. but he didn't, so I couldn't apply the brakes.

As I was working out what to do next, the brakes freed themselves.

Okay, at least I can continue on to work.

on the way, I was thinking that it was a bit of a coincidence that I had played with the brakes the day before. So I started thinking about it a bit, and guessed that some of the crud that had built up on the back of the brake pads had come loose and jammed somewhere applying the brakes. Now as the varadero has linked brakes that meant that as the front brakes were applied, the back brake got applied as well.

And I also guessed that the piece of crud either got worked loose due to vibration, or just broke up and the brakes loosened.

So the moral of the story is : If you see crud near your braking system, dont just ignore it. clean it up and make sure that all of the components can move freely.

I have now taken the calipers apart again and used wet and dry on the pads to clean all of the gunk off them, so this shouldn't happen again.

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