Bit perplexed!

Just come back from Passportes Du Soleil and had a rather ‘interesting’ experience. We were lucky enough to get the good weather this weekend but I had a major problem with my brakes.
Like most people (I would imagine) when going down the DH optional reds, I trail my back brake, cos they’re bloody steep and I wanted to live! but after a short while my brakes failed completely and the lever pulled right back to the bar without any effect .. rapid pumping of the lever followed and an inwardly muttered ‘Oh shit!’ and some braking was regained … closely followed by same again.
This happened through most of saturday when it was very hot but even on the cooler sunday morning when we had a couple of hrs in Les Gets I had the same problem.
Anybody experienced the same or know why my brakes failed … pads were new and run in.
any advice welcome.

Probably boiled the fluid(or contaminants in the fluid, which cause a drop in the boiling point). Bleed fresh fluid through it(DOT5.1 has the highest boiling point of readily available fluids),drag the brake less,maybe fit a bigger rotor too.

boiled ya fluid

make sure you are using 5.1

and if the pistons are metal ones replace with phenolics- big heat improvement on my minis

Thanks lads …. looks like its a fluid change then.

will try and ‘man up’ too 😀

It’s not a question of braking less, just differently. Once you pull the lever, it becomes an closed system. You need to open it up once in a while. Braking on the straights, not in the corners.

That kind of braking will give you massive fade pretty quickly, but without cahones like space hoppers it’s hard to avoid. I could never figure out what causes rakes to behave like they have a massive air bubble then feel okay again 10 minutes later.

one theory is that unless it’s very fresh, dot can hold a lot of moisture and this starts to evaporate as your brakes heat up. One way to check is to pull a vacuum in a syringe sample of warm, used fluid and see if it evolves bubbles.

I don’t reckon flying does your brakes any favours – mine always tended to benefit from a bleed afterwards.

Checked your brake fluid reservoir levels?

It’s got nothing to do with cahones!!

You need to learn what your brakes can do and where to use them.

If your still out there swap to some organic pads (heat less but go quicker) find some bigger rotors and build up to more specific braking rather than dragging

mikewmith – got back last night … might try a bleed and a bigger rotor on the back … it was just a bit of a shocker as I hadn’t realised there was a problem until it was a bit late! … made for some pretty ‘interesting’ decents though
oliverd1981 .. thats exactly what they were doing … one minute nothing and pumping like crazy .. 10 min later back and feeling fine.
Will try changing my braking … was my first alps visit so some of those downhill tracks with mahoosive berms were a bit of an eye opener.
we flew as well so maybe that is an issue.

thanks for all the advice everyone.