I have never in my 50+ years of motorcycling had a brake failure like this. Roll the bike out of the house, down the steps and the rear brake just went to zero. All the way down, like the master cylinder failed outright. Read some others had this issue and resolved it (temporarily) by bleeding the brakes.
First off, it really ticks me off that such a new high end bike could have such a blatant brake failure. I checked to see if there was a recall, and none for this issue were reported. So I reported it. I encourage anyone who has a relatively new scrambler that had this issue, in or out of warranty to report it to the NHTSA.
So after bleeding the darn thing, it has come back. The question then is why?
Well lots of speculation, but what I have concluded is that there is no heat shield between the catalytic part of the muffler and the brake master cylinder. So, if it is a hot day, and you park it out of the breeze, the heat from the cat cooks the brake fluid and boils it. I noticed that the reservoir was over full when I started to bleed the brakes.
Makes sense to me. Anyway, I need to take it for a harsh braking test drive to make sure that the seals have not been damaged too. Then, I'll have to design a heat shield or decat the thing.
This happened on a Sixty two and the exhaust on the 800cc bikes is different and many not be an issue. Anyway, if you had this or similar issue, file an nhtsa complaint, and maybe Ducati will do a recall and fix this most dangerous design problem. As I stated, I have had many bikes over many years and NEVER had this happen to me, even on my 40 year old bikes.
First off, it really ticks me off that such a new high end bike could have such a blatant brake failure. I checked to see if there was a recall, and none for this issue were reported. So I reported it. I encourage anyone who has a relatively new scrambler that had this issue, in or out of warranty to report it to the NHTSA.
So after bleeding the darn thing, it has come back. The question then is why?
Well lots of speculation, but what I have concluded is that there is no heat shield between the catalytic part of the muffler and the brake master cylinder. So, if it is a hot day, and you park it out of the breeze, the heat from the cat cooks the brake fluid and boils it. I noticed that the reservoir was over full when I started to bleed the brakes.
Makes sense to me. Anyway, I need to take it for a harsh braking test drive to make sure that the seals have not been damaged too. Then, I'll have to design a heat shield or decat the thing.
This happened on a Sixty two and the exhaust on the 800cc bikes is different and many not be an issue. Anyway, if you had this or similar issue, file an nhtsa complaint, and maybe Ducati will do a recall and fix this most dangerous design problem. As I stated, I have had many bikes over many years and NEVER had this happen to me, even on my 40 year old bikes.