Brakes, what a phenomenon when you really think about it. With the squeeze of your four fingers/tap of your foot you can bring a 400+ pound accelerating machine to a stop. We’re going to talk about the two major types of brakes that are probably the engineering behind the stopping of your two wheeled machine.
First method is a disc brake system. Disc brakes use a disc, called a rotor, which is made of cast iron to slow and stop a motorcycle. The rotor, which is attached to your wheel slows by pressure from your brake calipers. The brake calipers are the assembly that house your brake pads and pistons. The pistons are responsible for pressing your brake pads tightly onto your rotors, which slows the wheel. So you can imagine the pistons, pressing brake pads on either side of your rotors creates a great deal of friction and heat. If you can check your brake pads every so often, because they can wear down to the bare metal and eventually cause damage to your rotor. Also you can over heat your brakes, which will cause them to be less effective or not effective at all, commonly called brake fade.
If you look at your brakes and don’t see calipers and a rotor you could have drum brakes on your motorcycle. A drum brake uses a similar method as disc brakes, converting motion to heat and slow the motorcycle with friction, but has a slightly differently technology. The system has a drum (circular covered assembly) and the friction is caused by shoes or pads pressing on the inner –or more rarely, outer surface. With drum brakes you may hear that they are “self-applying” this means the rotation of the drum causes one or both of the pads to naturally press onto the friction surface, which means less work for you.
So that’s how the wheels stop, but everything starts with your foot or hand and a master cylinder. The pressure applied to your pedal or lever is converted into hydraulic pressure by the master cylinder. This hydraulic pressure is what moves the pistons in your calipers. You can normally find your master cylinders by looking for a brake fluid reservoir which supplies the master cylinder with brake fluid and insures it does not intake air. You may hear the term “bleeding your brakes” which refers to removing the air from your master and lines, air bubbles compromise your system and can cause you to have weak or no brakes at all. Due to the sensitive nature of all these components you can see why checking your system for flaws in important.
The major things to check is your pads, make sure you still have meat on them. Make sure no fluids are leaking and that your fluid levels are correct and your fluid is a healthy color –if it starts looking dingy and dark you may need new fluids. Check your brakes line every so often, they should be away from your wheels or locations where they might be pinched, make sure there are no rips or crushed areas.
Masters, calipers, rotors, pistons aren’t such scary words when you understand how they work and rely on each other. So take some time and consider your braking system and get to know it a bit better.
