As per usual this will require a short story to explain! When I first bought my Scrambler 800 last year I didn't pay too much attention to certain things including the front brake as I was excited to be owning a new bike! After a few weeks of ownership I replaced the oem brake and clutch levers with pazzo style shorties. Fast forward to a couple of months ago, during my prep for my track day, my next door neighbour (he does lots of track days and has ridden for years) had a sit on my bike and commented on how soft and spongey my front brake lever was. I booked my bike into a well respected bike mechanic who used to work for Ducati. He bled the front brake and it seemed a bit better, not massively but a tiny bit less spongey. I was hoping for a nice crisp initial bite though. I just presumed that was the way the Scrambler brake set up is. Having done my track day where I ran out of brakes (brake fade), I replaced the oem pads with some EBC HH pads. Like a fool, having removed the master cyclinder reservoir cap to allow the caliper pistons to be retracted, i accidently pressed the front brake lever squirting a fair bit of brake fluid onto the floor! It seemed after that my front brake was spongey again, I presumed that I had somehow introduced air into the system via the reservoir as the fluid level was just on the minimum. Today, I had my bike serviced at a Ducati dealer and I asked whether they could bleed the brakes due to them being spongey. Luckily they agreed. When I returned to collect the bike, the guy at Ducati said that the front brake didn't seem to bleed well ie it was still spongey. So they swapped my aftermarket brake lever with a oem one. I was told that with the oem lever that it wasn't spongey and that somehow the aftermarket lever was affecting the brake. Once home I swapped out the aftermarket lever for my oem one. Here's what I found... (Not sure what the spring type noise was during setting 2 pulling back?!) I used a guide to try and set up the mc plunger via the screw. Does this guide look correct? What do you guys think? Thanks.
In my experience with front brakes does the lever come back along way then go solid and provide good braking so just to much lever travel, or is it just spongy all the way to the bars with no real bite? The first problem can be brake pistons stuck to the seals. When the lever is released because the piston is not sliding through the seal the seal is stretching then pulls the piston back away from the pads so there is always to much gap between pad and disc. Pulling lever in a distance just to take up this distance before the pads reach the disc. You can see if this is happening by looking down and seeing it the pads pull away from the disc when lever is released. The second one is sometimes fluid leaking past the first seal in the master cyclinder,So you don't get a hard lever.
So, having ridden the bike with the OEM levers I have to eat my words and moaning! Lol. The brake is the best it's ever felt! Lever travel isn't excessive and the bite is good along with no brake fade from the new EBC HH pads. I do apologise for my rant!
