Puncture in Cork - the sequel
Hi Guys,
Thanks again to everyone who came back to me (on a Sunday morning) when I was stuck with a front wheel puncture. I had to get the bike recovered from the roadside near Arklow, Mohammed the breakdown driver was very thorough and took care to make sure the bike was well tied down on the back of the lorry. He left me off at the (very expensive) guesthouse in Cork and I got a new Bridgestone fitted the next morning at Dessie's tyres. I had to faff about getting tools at Halfords to take the front wheel out myself, but was more than happy to get a tyre on a Sunday morning.
The point of this part of the story is that as soon as I started to ride the bike (2005 R1200 RT) to the tyre place, I realised I had no brakes and the brake failure light was flashing furiously. I rode home from Cork to Enniskillen with what BMW calls 'residual braking', an interesting experience that reminded me a bit of riding an old English classic a while back and realising that braking technology has advanced quite a bit over the years!
Anyhow, I had myself convinced that the Brake servo was fooked, and started googling about how to by-pass the servo or get rid of it. There is loads of info about junking the servo on 1150's, but not much about 1200's. The easy bit would be the direct connection of pedals to calipers, the not so easy bit would be persuading the bike that it should show brake lights and tell me what speed it as doing.Not to mention abs and other flashing lights.
After a quick consultation with Jay (thanks Jay!) I decided to commence surgery, after a couple of hours I had a naked bike, every corner of the garage full of body parts and umpteen boxes full of screws. It was time to bite the bullet and I started with the back end. The rear master cylinder is behind a panel with the footrest and brake pedal, I was ready to disconnect the brake pipe from the master cylinder to the servo when lo and behold, I spotted the BRAKE SWITCH. The little bit of springy flat metal attached to the switch was bent away at 90 % from where it should have been, so it was nowhere near the little button on the bottom of the brake switch. Which explained why the brake light was permanently on and the bike would not initialise the servo when it was started. I bent the little bugger back put the petrol tank back on, brake light off, switched on and the servo whirred away merrily. I reckon what happened was that one of the straps must have caught the back of the switch when it was going on or coming off the lorry.
So I took the whole plastics off the bike when all I had to do was adjust the brake switch, but the upside is that I now know where everything goes, the servo isn't fecked and I still have abs etc. I have also decided to change the fluid and bleed the servo over the winter. Another example of checking the simple things first!
