Five-Point Motorcycle Brake Inspection

Warmer weather means it's time to get your bike ready to ride. This quick five-point inspection video is a quick health check for your motorcycle brakes to make sure you get the most out of the riding season.

We're going to cover the front master cylinder, master cylinder reservoir, brake lines and routing, caliper condition including pistons and brake pads, brake rotors, and the rear braking system. Each section of the video highlights what to look for when your bike has been sitting for some time between riding seasons, is new to you, or to identify the source of any issues you may be having.

The process is quick and easy but necessary for your safety and can cut down on repair costs by catching problems early. 

Transcript

hi I'm market break crafters and I'm just doing this five minute break check video so just give you all the key aspects you want to go over your breaks before you you know you start the writing season or if the bikes new to you so looks like it takes five minutes and it's really worthwhile doing now this is a classic example because this bikes new to us and we've already found some things going wrong with it that need to be addressed and as I say what we're going to do is that we'll do longer in-depth videos on each aspect of the brake system but this this is just like a check system so this is what we're going to do so let's say we're going to go through master cylinders brake lines calipers brake pads rotors and bleeding the system but here all we're gonna do is this is just in a check and this is an inspection okay so we're gonna start from the top and this is the master sir and the front master cylinder so this is where we'll begin okay and what we're usually looking for first thing is the color of the brake fluid with first the brake fluid level make sure that you know you've got plenty of brake fluid there and also want to check on the color if it starts going that sort of darkest Brown had probably indicates that it needs replacing so again that's one of the first checks to have a look now one of the things that I said about checking bikes is again this is new to us but what we know is straight away is that this isn't the original master cylinder to this bike so again we want to find out how and why on what and we'll do that in our lair videos but what this B mas and is from and how it will actually affect the braking system so look so we'll do that at a later point but then once we've checked the master cylinder check your brake lights next thing all that's good we're going to start moving down to the brake lines okay so we'll get the brake lines from the master cylinder we follow them down now what you're doing is just chasing down and checking the root of them okay and this is where on this particular bike looks there's a used bike we found some issues now it's braided lines which are great excellent far superior than the rubber lines again rubber lines you can check just by giving them a good squeeze you can actually see them expanding you can see them moving and flexing which indicates that they're wearing out braided lines are far better however with this bike what we see is that hoops ever has put these brake lines on hasn't routed them correctly and they're getting trapped here on the chassis and on the pork leg they're actually getting pinched and you can actually see this kinks there's where and they're also pulling lever I'm not actually even sure if they're the right length which means that they're going to start putting tension on the joints here which may cause problems so these need to be replaced this this isn't correct again this is an important thing that we've picked up on and I'll do this immediately okay so then from the brake lines what we do is follow down to the calipers okay so what we're checking here with the caliper is the basic condition and we can see that this one's quite dirty you can see it got some very dirty pistons and it does need a good clean the other important thing is that we can see the levels on the brake pads we're looking for nice even wear and also how much meat still left on the pads okay so the meat and even this on this is really good the only thing it doesn't he doing it needs a good clean but again we'll do that on a separate video so after the pads and after the caliper last thing that we want to do is have a look at the rotors so with the rotors what we're looking for is primarily just scoring heavy scoring and also we're where it's always a good way to tell you and check the mileage you know so if you've got a bike as claiming it's 6,000 miles yet you see real big dick worn out rotors you know that that mileage isn't true so tell us a lot with the rotors but again what we're looking for is any scoring now someone's run them down to the metal and it's damaged the rotors also check for genuine rotors you always go with OEM you know either a high quality EBC or original rotor don't use Chinese ones that they are just garbage and I've known them to break up I've got a friend who's on the track they those GSXR thousand come to the end of the straight front brake rotors have broke up he's going straight over the bars they're really not worth it so always use OEM or OM specification rotors so yeah again no cracks no excessive wear good condition just do it a bit but clean and that's great so and we'll just have a do the same again and we're going to have a look on the the rear system now okay so checking the rear it's exactly the same as the front is just locating this like different places so here we have the qu brake reservoir so what we'll do is check on the level make sure it's between the two markers and also check the color again we've got a dark color here so I'll be looking at replacing that here you could master cylinder and what you're just checking on is make sure you've got plenty of play and good action very easy to drag on though so you have to allow for your foot where you foot resting on it so do do check on that again that's good the next thing is we're into the brake line okay so before we in the brake line now it is worth checking because again this is where this braided line which is excellent for betting the originals but you want to make sure that the there's a laid out correctly and they're not going to be rubbing and there's nowhere marks on this but this is all good again we follow it down into the caliper we can check just through here both the the piston the condition and it's same sort of thing just and it needs a good clean and also the pads got plenty of meat on them so they're good we come through and we check the roads are no cracks no place other thing with rotors is check for bluing if you see any bluing on that that means that at some point the Rope break color has been dragging on it and creating an awful lot of heat so that's there's something to check on so if you see a blue rotor or any sort of bluing on your pads around here around this sort of area it's something that's definitely worth investigating further there you go that's pretty much it it's just simple from yeah master cylinder brake lines your fluid caliper and your brake pads and rotor simple steps takes five minutes to go through it and you'll no waste and you can catch stuff early you'll actually save yourself a lot of my now rather than paraded Pistons corroded calipers internals and stuff like this that I strongly recommend that you give it a five minute check all right thank you very much