Slow your road!

Slow your road!

All good things must come to an end; like roads for example. So to improve my bikes ability to avoid hedge diving I picked up some front braided lines. These are in improvement over the OEM hoses as they are stronger, so less prone to bulge under heavy braking. They are also lighter which helps with unsprung weight (something that I am really not bothered  about on this bike). As the old hoses were, well, old. The replacement hoses were doubly needed to bring back a more responsive front brake.
As it so happened a helpful chap decided to write his VFR off and chose to break it so I was able to get this Goodrich aluminium braided front hose set for only £17, well it would be rude not to with a full set tipping the scales at £249.
On a slight side note, if I were to go new I'd get some Wezmoto hoses. I got some for my NSR250 and they tuned out to be pretty high quality.
As you hopefully already know. The VFR800 FI doesn't have simple, separate front and back brake systems. It has a linked system called Duel Combined Braking System (DCBS) where the front brake operates the outer pots on the front and centre on the rear. The opposite it true for the rear brake and as a result the hoses are a little more complicated. Without describing the entire system, you can see from the image that we are only taking off the hoses and unions that effect the front system (as they are hydraulically isolated from one another) leaving the rear to front and front to rear link pipes in place.
First I undid the top union at the brake master cylinder, stuffing some rag around the open port to prevent paint damage.
Then I undid the bottom unions with an old spray can lid under them to catch the old fluid.
As you can see from the image above, I didn't bother braking the unions down. Rather just took the whole thing off as a oner, requiring the middle solid pipe to be unbolted from the front mudguard.
From there I slung the new hoses in with new crush washers and bled the system.
I use a little bleeder (from Motrax) for bleeding brakes. They are a little better than just using a hose although as yet I haven't found one that works as advertised. They always seem to need cracking open slightly as otherwise the brake pressure can't overcome the spring.
Whilst I was there I replaced all of the brake fluid in both systems as it was pretty old and manky looking. Even without changing the rear hoses it makes a difference as over time Dot4 absorbs moisture making it less effective and damages brake components over time.
End verdict, the look better and feel better so £17 well spent I think.