Brakes

Braided Line

Conventional rubber brake hoses degrade over time and will start to swell when the brakes are applied. They should be replaced ever three or four years. Braided brake lines do not suffer from this as they have an outer sheath that is woven around the fluid carrrying pipe that prevents any swelling. Materials used for the braiding vary but stainless steel is popular and more recently there are braided lines that use more exotic materials such as carbon or kevlar to achieve the same without the weight penalty of steel.

Brake Disk

Brake disks are a service item and will require periodic replacement. Most front disks on modern bikes are made up of a seperarate hub and disk that are kept together by rivets. The rivits allow a degree of movement between the disk and hub and this is often called a floating (or semi-floating) disk.

Break Disk

See Brake Disk

Caliper

See Calliper

Calliper

The brake calliper is the part that forces the brake pads to grip the brake disk. On almost all modern bikes they are hydraulic. Callipers come in various forms and the starting point is generally the number of hydraulic pistons. On simpler and older bikes a calliper may have only a single piston. On this type of calliper the body of the calliper is allowed to float so that pushing on one brake pad moves the calliper so that pressure is applied to the other pad. Twin piston callipers apply force on both pads at once and the calliper is ridgidly mounted. On production bikes there are also four and six piston variations and this allows the braking forces to be spread over a larger pad area. The latest generation of brake callipers on sports bikes are called radial callipers. This refers to the way the callipers are mounted to the fork legs and offers a more rigid mounting than conventional callipers.

Master Cylinder

The master cylinder is the part that the brake lever is attached to. Generally there are two distinct types. Those that have a built in fluid resevoir and those that have the resevoir separate.