Putting the brakes on

The braided hoses came this week from those lovely people at HEL who sorted me out with some denim blue race hoses with blue anodised end caps which work well with the stock colour of the bike.

The original lines looked like this:-



(Note the lesser spotted Do-it-Dave peeking from behind the wheel).


With the aid of Daves Victorian brake bleeding bottle, handed down from father to son etc etc we drained the old fluid out and whipped the old stock hoses out.

The new ones then were put in their place and bled copiously taking almost 14 gallons of brake fluid to fill and remove the air (well a full 1/2 litre bottle but it seemed like more). We should be contenders for the new Olympic sport of synchronised brake bleeding come London 2012 with some top spanner twisting and lever pumping action.

The back brake fits snugly into the clips for the original giving this rather neat shot here.


The front lines have changed things more radically. The stock layout was 1 cable down to the wheel, and then shorter ones down to the left caliper and another over the top to the right one. The new lines are direct from the master cylinder all the way down to the calipers. This means they don't fit in an obvious way into the current fixing points so I'll just have to get some blue anodized hose separators and p-clips. Oh darn it ;-)



And the full frontal view



Next weekend will mostly be spent tidying this up with some spanking new clips and connectors. And trying not to order Pazzo levers, but possibly failing miserably.