No front brakes on my KTM500!

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OomD

Grey Hound
WD Supporter
Joined
Apr 11, 2013
Messages
6,937
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3,958
Location
Centurion
Bike
KTM 690 Adventure
So with my back op, covid, recently broken wrist, etc I have not been able to ride my yet this year. I know, suck! Last Monday I though it would be a good time to take it to Rhino park and get some (s)miles, my back feels great and my wrist doesn't hurt. Well, not that much. Anyway, I wheeled out the KTM and realized there's no front brakes. Nothing at all! No problem, I thought, I needs to be bled.

Mini-me helped me quickly and we bled the brakes. Then bled them some more, and then some more. Then I opened the reservoir to add brake fluid, and discovered it was empty! Completely! I couldn't figure out why, there are no leaks anywhere. Close inspection of the whole brake system revealed one that still looks like it cam from the factory. Not a drop of brake fluid anywhere, nor on the ground. Anyway, a bit perplexed I filled up the reservoir, and immediately the bleeding started paying off.

But, I could still not get the brakes to how they were. I suspected a cracked brake line or something. Whatever we did, there was still air in the brake system. So just before deciding to strip apart the (virtually brand new) callipers it hit me. When air is in the system it will travel up to the reservoir, being the highest point. I was relying on this while we bled it... until I noticed the huge loop that the brake line follows upwards from the reservoir, before going down to the calliper. So all the air was being trapped in the pipe at the highest point of the loop's arc. Once I realised this I simply pulled the pipe downwards (making the reservoir the highest) and I could bleed it to perfection. Problem solved!

I was a bit peeved though, at KTM for having such a (seemingly) unnecessary long brake line, which causes the high loop, until I remembered that I lowered my suspension... thereby raising the loop of the pipe even higher above the reservoir. Duh! Solution was to cable-tie the pipe to the headlight guard such that it no longer goes above the reservoir.

So brakes sorted, and we could ride. I still couldn't understand why the reservoir was empty in the first place, I could only attribute it to the reservoir not being full ever since I bought the bike.  Anyway, all's well that ends well and we had quite an enjoyable outing at Rhino park.
 
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