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Front brakes are locked

  
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Front brakes are locked

 
l.landsburg_1964 l.landsburg_1964
New User | Posts: 1 | Joined: 07/09
Posted: 07/19/09
04:07 PM

I rode my Kawaski Vulcan 500 about 3 weeks ago when it started pouring.  I got home and covered it up. We finally had a nice day to ride yesterday, but my bike would not move. It seems like the front brakes are locked.  You can see that the pads are right on the rotor.  I don't know what happened, and I can't move the bike. What do I do?  I have no way to lift the bike up, it just sits in my driveway.  

 
sloowpoke sloowpoke
Enthusiast | Posts: 408 | Joined: 07/08
Posted: 07/20/09
02:28 AM

>It seems like the front brakes are locked.

That's an unusual thing to happen. It pretty much requires many years of completely ignoring any concept of brake maintenance before something like that can happen. Even then, it's far more likely that the brake just doesn't work, instead of locking up.

The first thing to do is verify it, by blocking up the front of the frame to get the wheel off the ground and see if it really is locked up. That's easy to do, since the bike is tall enough to use it as a lever to lift itself up.

Start by blocking up the frame under the front of the engine, on the right side, while the bike is on the side stand. Then stack a similar height of blocks beside the frame on the left side and stand the bike up, pushing the blocks under the frame with your foot. It's easier to do the first time, with a helper.

If the bike isn't high enough yet, lean it to the left and add another block on the right, then lean it to the right and add another block on the left.

It's basically the same technique used by thousands of us to lift our multi thousand pound boats off the trailors, when we need to to some trailor maintenance.

regards,
Joe  

 

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