mushy rear brake (pic)

[weaselnoze]

the other day i noticed my rear brake has very little stopping effect.  as i recall, i previously could lock up my rear tire with just the back brake.  not even close now.  so i decided it would be a good day to change brake fluid in both brakes.  ok done. no change.  looked at the pads.  worn but still has some life left.  my only conclusion is that im not applying enough brake. why? cause it hits my damn exhaust pipe.  before this wasnt a problem.  i could apply enough brake before it reached the 'mid pipe'.  

now i have attached a small drawing.  at point A there is about 1.5 inches between the brake lever and the pipe.  point B there is about .5 inches.  this is where the pipe and the lever come in contact.  

am i not allowing enough space for the lever to travel??

[94suzuki500]

maybe your flange rotated alittle and made it closer to the brake lever.

[weaselnoze]

i thought of that and it is possible but not very likely..

[weaselnoze]

any one with some numbers?

[Kerry]

What kind of numbers are you looking for?  

[airbrush]

yup...i would say that could be likely...i have a flange/mid pipe from srinath and I had to rotate it around a bit so that the lever had enough travel.

[weaselnoze]

What kind of numbers are you looking for?  

proper travel distance? etc

[Kerry]

Will this do?

"Resting" position:


Depressed:


In the first pic, the ruler was angled out a bit, so the bottom of the lever should really be at about 1/16".  But that's OK, because in the second pic I was pushing down from the side rather than from above.  I think the delta between the two positions is fairly accurate.

[weaselnoze]

great. thanks kerry thats what i needed to see

[Rema1000]

Threadjack:
When I want to alert the person behind me that I'm slowing down, I tap the rear brake a few times... until recently.  I was parked so I could see my reflection, and tapped the brake, but didn't see any brakelight at all.  I tapped it several times, and found that I had to depress it a fair bit to get the brakelight to come on.  My experience with cars has been that it doesn't take more than a little pressure to light the brakelight.

Any estimates on lever distance travelled, before brakelight should come on?

[Mat]

Threadjack:
When I want to alert the person behind me that I'm slowing down, I tap the rear brake a few times... until recently.  I was parked so I could see my reflection, and tapped the brake, but didn't see any brakelight at all.  I tapped it several times, and found that I had to depress it a fair bit to get the brakelight to come on.  My experience with cars has been that it doesn't take more than a little pressure to light the brakelight.

Any estimates on lever distance travelled, before brakelight should come on?

you can adjust the brake light switch

[Kerry]

you can adjust the brake light switch

See the "PS" at the end of this old post.

[Mat]

you can adjust the brake light switch

See the "PS" at the end of this old post.

your the man

[tkm433]

First off is your rear caliper working proper?  Are the pistons moving?  

Are you sure there is no air in the system since that would cause the pedal to travel more than needed and would also cause the brakes to not be able to stop properly.  Brake fluid does not compress while air does so if you have air in the brake line or in the caliper the brakes will not work worth a crap.

Finally you can adjust the brake lever and rear master cylinder so that the lever willl move less to cause the brakes to work.  Check the bracket where the brake lever attaches to the master cylinder.  Check the images above in the post from Kerry and you will notice the gold color bracket in the left of the image where the brake lever connects to the master cylinder.  The gold nut is an adjustment nut which you can use to adjust the lever.