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John_D

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  1. Thanks for your suggestions. Cable tying the lever was the first thing I tried. It worked wonders for my old VFR800 on several occasions but made no difference at all to the Yamaha. I'm confident that the fluid is OK because the standard Yamaha diagnostic tests fixed the problem, if only for a few hundred miles. If the fluid had absorbed water then the only way to fix it would be to replace it.
  2. He rode it a short distance from the car park to the workshop entrance at the back of the shop but he didn't give it a proper test ride. My understanding is that first he ran tests with the Yamaha diagnostic unit and then verified the brake performance on the rolling road. He didn't find any problems so I can understand why he didn't feel the need for a test ride. He was sufficiently confident to re-run the diagnostics in my presence to give me confidence that the bike was OK. I was already thinking as you are. Late yesterday I did manage to get the dealer on the phone. He agreed that he'd have another look. I suggested an initial test ride and he readily agreed. Unfortunately I'm not sure when that will happen because of covid-19.
  3. Thanks for your comments. After I posted I went for a ride to see if I could get the ABS to activate, again. On a slightly dusty road I managed to get the rear to pulse a few times by applying really heavy presure to the pedal. I'm not sure if the performance of the rear brake has changed because it has always been next to useless so it could probaly fail completely and still have minimal effect on stopping distance. I applied as much pressure as I dared to the front which just confirmed that the stopping distance was a lot more than I would like. Given the poor deceleration, I'm not surprised that I didn't get the ABS to activate. The caliper pistons are fine. This is no surprise because the the bike has only done 5000 miles and has been ridden rarely on salty roads. Haven't checked the slide pin yet. As I said to roadrash83 , the dealer made things better, for a while, simply by running their normal diagnostic tests and then measuring brake performance on their rolling road. I don't think that would fix corrosion or wear problems at the brake caliper. I take your point that normally the ABS is inactive until needed but what if the ABS unit is faulty, e.g. a sticky solenoid or a leaky valve? Could that result in reduced fluid pressure in the caliper? Is it possible that a faulty ECU or sensor results in the system being in a constant anti lock state, again applying only reduced pressure to the brakes? These are the sort of things that might be fixed, at least temporarily, by the diagnostic tests and associated system reset.
  4. Thanks for the quick reply. I'm not convinced that bleeding will help because the dealer didn't bleed the brakes and yet the problem went away for a while. Also, I'm a bit reluctant to do anything myself until I've at least spoken to the dealer again which is a bit of a problem at the moment because of Covid-19.
  5. I have a Tracer 900GT which I bought about 18 month ago. Late last year, on a 1500 mile trip to and around Scotland, the braking performance gradually deteriorated. Gone was the sharp, instant braking achieved with just one or two fingers. I found myself using my whole hand to brake. It got to the point where I didn't feel happy riding in traffic at any speed. Gone was the sharp, instant braking achieved with just one or two fingers. The lever didn't feel particularly spongy or have excessive travel but it needed much more force than before. The ultimate braking force was seriously compromised and stopping distance was way more than it had been. I called the dealer and explained the problem. A week later they had the bike in their workshop on a rolling road and ran their diagnostics. The mechanic came out and said he couldn't find a problem and said that the brakes seemed OK to him. I was invited into the workshop where he re-ran the diagnostics including the ABS system test so that I could see for myself that everything was OK. I left the shop feeling unhappy that they hadn't found or fixed the problem. However as soon as I started to ride home I could feel that the brakes were back to normal. They had obviously done something that had fixed the problem, even if they didn't know it. Unfortunately, after a few hundred miles of riding, the brakes began to deteriorated again and they are now as bad as they ever were. Has anyone else had or heard of this problem? Is it possible that the ABS is reducing brake performance all the time, not just during extreme braking?
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