In an earlier post I mentioned that the dealer that I had bought
the Triumph cruiser from had made quite a song and dance
about all their second-hand bikes coming with a “full dealer service”.
However, this seems to mostly have
consisted of glancing at the bike sideways and then stamping the service log as
done. Very little actual work appears to have taken place.
On taking things apart, it was
obvious that not one bolt had been as much as loosened, most didn’t look to
have been touched since the bike left the factory.
Yup, this definitely looks
like a brake caliper which went through a rigorous dealer service less than
three months and about 1k dry miles ago, doesn’t it?
First things first, clean everything
and remove the pistons and carefully scrape away all the surface deposits to see
if they could be salvaged or would need replacing.
They turned out to be not as
bad as I had feared, and they actually polished up quite nicely once all the
crud was removed. So, no need to replace them for the time being.
The rest of the caliper bits
were de-greased and cleaned up before being reassembled with new pads and some clean
brake fluid, after which they felt much, much better.
And the moral would appear to
be, no matter what promises are made to you, always check things for yourself.
