Rear Brake binding

[2mths]

1 day into my SV ownership and problem number one has reared it's ugly head. The rear brake on the bike is binding on.

Is the pedal adjustable? Could it just have been badly adjusted with no slack before it starts to act? Otherwise am I looking at a strip down job? I'm guessing wheel alignment could also be a problem but without a stand for it that'd be tricky to check at the moment.

Cheers peeps.

[Pedrosa]

Sounds like common prob of road crap maybe preventing free movement of caliper pistons. Try search on here or get yerself some brake cleaner and give inside of caliper(where pads meet pistons of caliper) a good squirt. Job even easier if you can remove the caliper itself, no need to remove wheel. Have a little looksy first and you will see not a big issue to remove caliper to make job easier. Not a big deal to put right. Good luck.

P.s. Your rear brake is a disc? Therefore "adjustment" can be done only by bleeding of system if brake found to be ineffificient. But that does not seem to be your present problem.

[jamesobrady]

when you say its binding on do you mean the light is on all the time as opposed to the brake is physically on?

If its the light on all the time its an adjustment at the switch, just behind the heel plate(ish)... if the caliper is actually binding then bring it back to the shop you bought it,if a shop.... :)

If the caliper is binding, its one of two things, the slide pins, or the piston.
Wide description for slide pins is, take caliper apart, grease up pistons using high-melting point grease, put everything back together.

The piston is messier, and you need a set of seals( oil seal and dust seal per piston). Take it apart, remove piston(s), remove seals, clean the crap out of everywhere till its all nice and sparkling.... put back together.

On of my front calipers was sticky recently....road crap had stuffed up the outside pad on the slide pin it sits on..cleaned it up and a wee bit of copper grease on the pin sorted it out..... same thing then happened on the rear caliper...one of the pins locked up and I burnt my way through the pad on the piston side in 2 weeks without noticing until the metal on metal squeal alerted me :(

[RandyO]

1 I'm guessing wheel alignment could also be a problem but without a stand for it that'd be tricky to check at the moment.

Cheers peeps.

rear caliper is axial mounted, so wheel alignment cannot cause you problem

[2mths]

Ok. Following advice here and the manual elsewhere on the site I've made some progress. To clarify, when I say binding I mean the pad is staying in contact with the disk and appears to have some force behind it, causing the disk to get very hot. I think it's also causing scoring but I can't be sure as I've had the bike so little time.

I removed the cover for the pin.
Slacked the pin.
Removed the rearward bolt
Swung caliper up.
Removed pin completely and removed pads. (This all pretty much as per manual).

I then used copper based anti seize compound on the pin. (I now wish I had given it a light wet 'n' dry too).

Following some other advice I used the foot pedal to push the piston out a few mm before then pushing it back in.

Put pads back in (this too me some time). However in the process I caused a 'bit' to drop out. So I then ended up undoing the frontmost caliper bolt to get the caliper free to see where it needed to go. Tightened bolts up by feel. Suspect a torque wrench might be going on the shopping list. I don't fancy my brakes falling apart (amazed they don't shake loose even when torqued?).

Went for test ride. I would say that the situation is improved, though still not perfect. Still I think I'm happy to ride it now and will keep an eye on things till I get my hands on some brake cleaner at which point I'll probably do it again but try and clean things up a bit better.

Thanks for the posts people.

[2mths]

rear caliper is axial mounted, so wheel alignment cannot cause you problem

Oh. Thankyou for that info. Reassuring. I thought it was mounted to swing arm, hence my concern. Axial mounting does make much more sense. Well at least that is one thing I don't have to worry about. I think a paddock stand would still be a good investment though.