I decided that the front brake on my Kawasaki KLR650 is pretty much crap.<\/p>\n
I went on line and checked out the KLR forums, and found that people agreed with me.<\/p>\n
Some said braided steel brake lines made it better. Some said a bigger disc made it better.<\/p>\n
I bought some braided steel brake lines and a bigger disc, and a bracket to re-position the caliper over the bigger disc, and on Saturday morning I fitted them. I put speedbleeders in the calipers and replaced the rear brake line as well, and bled the hydraulic circuits until the lever and pedal were firm.<\/p>\n
I took it for a test ride around the block.\u00a0The front brake was worse.<\/p>\n
I thought maybe that this was just because the pads hadn\u2019t bedded in properly on the new disc. What it needed, I decided, was a medium length ride with lots of gentle braking.<\/p>\n
I headed for Galston Gorge, and rode through the tight turns and hairpins to the bottom of the gorge. Then I kept going to Wisemans Ferry, because there is a steep descent to there as well, and also a pub.<\/p>\n
I parked outside the Wisemans Ferry Hotel and went inside. I sat at the bar and bought a beer.<\/p>\n
I was two thirds of the way through the beer when some drunk sat down near me, and wanted to chat. He told me he used to ride motocross on a Suzuki 400 in the old days, and he was doing pretty well until one race he had a big crash and injured his back.<\/p>\n
I asked him what happened after that. He said he gave up riding motorcycles.<\/p>\n
I asked him why. He said his doctor told him to.<\/p>\n
I\u00a0told him he gave up too easily. I said I knew a bloke who had a motorcycle accident and lost his left arm and his\u00a0left leg.<\/p>\n
\u201cJesus\u201d, said the barfly. \u201cWhat happened to him?\u201d<\/p>\n
I drained my beer, and stood, and reached for my helmet.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s all right now\u201d, I said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I decided that the front brake on my Kawasaki KLR650 is pretty much crap<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":5717,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[221],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bikeme.tv\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5716"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bikeme.tv\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bikeme.tv\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bikeme.tv\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bikeme.tv\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5716"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/bikeme.tv\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5716\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7397,"href":"https:\/\/bikeme.tv\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5716\/revisions\/7397"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bikeme.tv\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5717"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bikeme.tv\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5716"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bikeme.tv\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5716"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bikeme.tv\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5716"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}