Motorcycle and Scooter appreciation

4 year old tyre tech not four year old tyres I hope.

What's the hivemind on using red rubber grease (sparingly) for brake caliper seals and pistons? I'm rebuilding my SRADs front brakes, again, as they were sticking. I rebuilt them at Christmas, admittedly with a Drambuie, and only used brake fluid as lubrication so keen to use red rubber grease as it's never caused issues in the past. Like anything seems there's a millions conflicting views online.

So long as you don’t contaminate your fluids or pads, what’s not to love?

Great, just what I wanted to hear.

+1 on red rubber grease. Tend to cake it in all the places you want it (between caliper /piston square edged seal and the recess in caliper body, thats where they normally get moisture + dead DOT and then corrode like crazy, causing seal to be pushed into piston = drag). Bleed it up. Ride it around a day. Then flush it out and bleed again, you'll get loads of extra red rubber grease in the DOT.
If you've got sliding/single sided calipers (probably only the rear on a SRAD?) then make sure you clean out + polish up the slide pins. Use something like Yamalube lical grease on this. Designed for outboard motors so its waterproof enough, heat proof to around 180c and has good medium pressure properties. Also quite cheap. I use it on head bearings when there is an oil in frame job, as most grease will melt and drop out of the bearings once bike is running hot.

This shit here should be bible.

Those older Tokico callipers (pre-radial) tend to stick lots. You know they're bad when they're warping the disks. Some Nissins, or better still some Brembos would make the braking much better.

Brilliant, have been doing this since 125 ownership but read some conflicting views online and doubted myself. The rear is pretty good, for a back brake, so not going to mess with it. Fingers crossed I can get it all working and tested this weekend, pistons definitely went in smoother than when just lubed with DOT4.

Those older Tokico calliper

Yep those be them

Just found out about the Crispy Club stuff for the T7, looks interesting

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You will keep redoing them, just a tokico thing. Nissin suffer less due to the different areas of the caliper coated compared to the tokico.

BMW sliding pin grease or silicone grease or marine greases for pins.

Every mates bike, unless it's new, rear brake is useless. Most can work very well just have zero maintenance lol

Did the flywheel side crankseal on the CR250 last night. They were definitely gone, it had the very beginning of spray around the edge. It was a lucky escape the primary side gave out first. Will do the other one tonight if I have time.

Popped a 10oz flywheel weight on too while I was in there. Hopefully it makes it a bit more tractable - they're supposed to do wonders.

The rear brake in my book is essential for cornering and filtering. Using it in these situations also keeps your rear end control tight for when you need that rear brake in the wet. My rear brake is always as well maintained as the front brakes.

Tempted to pay for it, even though the photographer missed the actual touching down of the toes a moment later.

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Do it - it's always nice to have pics!

Stop riding that thing like a dirt bike and get off the inside more. And tuck your toes in.

:)

I think that was the first time my toes weren’t tucked!

Careful as I know (and Jung does) two people that have broken lower limbs when the toe touched down.

Well, feeling the toe scraping as the back started to (…hop?) was a clear sign I was reaching the sidewall!

Surely, I wouldn’t want to add any resistance that would throw me off at that moment.

As it happened at the weekend, I just kinda relaxed into it to settle and get it a little upright again.

Go find a nice quiet roundabout once it warms up a bit. Tried and tested proving ground for big lean and knee down.

Gotta be one without road furniture. Friend of my uncle tried to get a knee down on a roundabout. Lowsided, hit a post, totally lucid told the emergency services “I was being an idiot and trying to get a knee down”. Then he died in the ambulance on the way to hospital from internal damage.

Poor fella!

Pick your roundabout carefully - you want medium speed 30-50mph, not too much traffic and ideally, wide. I always viewed them as free track practice but they are great learning spots to see how far you can lean a bike and what changing your body position does for speed through a corner. Loads more crashes occur because people don't lean over than because they leant too far.

Just take it easy to start. Get forward and properly off the side of the bike - lessens the chance of rolling off the tyres or grinding undercarriage unexpectedly. Don't try and maintain lean, treat it as a series of corners to roll in and pick up through, keep your fingers completely off the front brake and just use the throttle to control speed.

Have fun! - short of diesel or grabbing the front brake, it's pretty hard to lowside if you're off the inside of the bike. Getting your knee down is a doddle - pretty pointless on the road (aside from an indication of how you're pressing on) but it still feels good!

Paid my monies. Will take on board advice for sure. Still learning, mind. Go back October '19 and I'd never even been on a motorcycle before.

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Everyone remembers their first - mine was the Putney roundabout over the A3, aged 16 on my Kawasaki AR50 (80 eh-hem....) Baggy 1990s jeans, leather jacket and skate shoes.

Ring-dinging around for about 10 minutes, hanging off like a chimp before a final swoop, dab....and ouch!!