(September 12, 2020 at 4:43 pm)onlinebiker Wrote: Here's a good brake story.
would have been different if he'd LISTENED to my advice.....
A buddy of mine had just finished putting together his 73 Harley shovelhead - prior to paint. He wanted to do all the fitting and whatnot - as this was a custom job. The frame was FLHT the front end was FXR - with custom aftermarket brakes. He was having a bit of problems with it - as they were a trailing edge caliper on a leading edge fork. I told him that I could see problems with that - but he "knows what he's doing"...
OK. Who am I to argue? Your bike. Your build.
He decided it was ready for a test ride. The engine had been previously run - so no problem, right.??
I decided to follow along on my Sporty.
He got down the road a couple miles from the house and pulled over. He got off, and checked - and the front brake was HOT. It shouldn't have been because he'd only used them lightly twice. I had some tools - and said - "Let's take that caliper off -- no sense in burning shit up - or locking up a brake".
Patience wasn't his long suit.
He said fuck it - and hopped back on the bike and headed for home. I decided to hold back - and give him lots of room in case shit went south.
Boy did it.
He later explained that when he got up to 60mph or so - he tapped the front brake to see if it would free it up. Nope. Quite the opposite.
He swerved a coupe times on the locked up front wheel - then the back end decided to go first for a while -- my buddy - in his mid 60's at the time - came off and started to try and do cartwheels - trying to keep his ass off the pavement. That didn't work so well either. The bike decided to do a cartwheel of it's own and then slid on it's side to a stop - with my bud stopping a few feet shorter.
I stopped my Sportster - hopped off and ran up to see how bad he was. He was just sitting up - bleeding from the head (his glasses gouged his eyebrow) hands, ass, elbows, knees.... ect..... And he said "Well - that didn't work".
No shit.
...
Back when I worked as a mechanic, some guy came into the shop with his left front rotor seized due to a bad brake line flex hose. All the parts stores were closed by that time (late on a Sunday). I backed the caliper off and told him to gauge traffic and use the parking brake to get home. He was back about 20 minutes later, all cheesed off at me because my "fix" didn't work. By then I was getting off work, so I told him he could leave it for tomorrow, or call a tow truck.
Dumbass.
If you get to thinking you’re a person of some influence, try ordering somebody else’s dog around.
