Upgrades and improvements!

     I have had some concern about the front brakes and their effectiveness.   The other bikes I have owned were all far superior to this bike in overall brake performance.  I have to this point changed the fluid and the brake pads and there has been little improvement.  I noticed a little leak from the master cylinder when I changed the brake fluid and the brake light actuator is only marginally functional so it seems like a good idea to upgrade it.  I found a 2005 master cylinder on ebay for $38.95 shipped, cheap enough.   The brake light actuator is improved on the later models so I will have to modify the wiring a little.  The first step was to drain the fluid reservoir and remove the old master cylinder.  The old brake switch was not very well protected from the elements.

 

 

     I went ahead and bolted the replacement master cylinder into place and reattached the brake line to close the system up.

 

     Yea, I know the throttle cable and housing are on the upgrade list as well as the clutch cable and housing.  The old wires for the brake switch were not very long and they were soldered to a fiber plate where connections were made. 

 

 

The wires were snipped at the connection plate and extensions were soldered onto the old wires and wrapped with shrink wrap to seal out the weather.

 

 

I made sure to slide the heat shrink into the old housing as far as possible.

 

 

Instead of being hard wired the new switch has two male connectors.  I first slid a large heat shrink cover onto the wires, then I installed two female connectors with right angle bends onto the wires. 

 

 

Next I used a heat shrink wrap large enough to slide over the connectors and slid them into the larger wrap.  With all this in place I heated the covers with a heat gun to seal everything up.  From there it was just plug up and adjust.

 

The process of filling and bleeding the replacement master cylinder was pretty straight forward.  That will be the topic for a later post all on it's own.  The brakes seem to be much improved on a short test ride.