Raven's Roads
Living an interesting life: the travels and musings
of motorcycling author Linda R. Moore

Feb 23, 2006

Like eating sugary doughnuts

Filed in Motorcycle Maintenance, Motorcycling

There’s a game people play where you try to eat a sugary doughnut without licking your lips. Most people fail.

It’s a bit like that when you can’t reasonably use your rear brake. The act of using both brakes to stop effectively is so instinctual that when there’s a problem it brings a whole new perspective to riding.

For a while I’d been noticing a rasping sound coming from the rear wheel, but couldn’t figure out what it was. It didn’t seem to be anything other than “aesthetic”, so I didn’t worry about it that much. Then, on Sunday we were at Kragen’s and they had a cute line-up of mini-bikes outside the store. I thought it would be fun to move Beastie round to sit with these baby bikes, but I could not make that bike budge. I thought it was that I was simply on an incline, but fast forward a couple of days and we finally figured it out when I couldn’t even push the bike into the carport. The rear brake pedal is sticking, and thus the rear brake has been more or less constantly. The only way round this is to remember to manually (pedually?) flip the pedal back up after I use that brake. Needless to say this is…awkward.

Because of this, the brake pads I installed towards the end of last year are already worn out.

So, trying to remember only to use one brake, today I went out to get new brake pads. This won’t fix the problem–we’ll have to tear off the pedal and assembly and find out if a pin died, or if I have to replace the master cylinder. It was a glorious mild sunny day and I was seriously bummed that I couldn’t just go down the coast instead of running errands. Thinking formally, mentally coaching myself (”Do not use the rear brake. Do not use the rear brake”), I managed to go the entire trip without once touching the rear brake.

Until I got home. It was only as I crossed the rather steep kerb to my complex that I forgot, and scraped the rear brake the few extra feet to my home.

Darn. I licked my lips.