I took the SP5 out for a run on Friday - apart from popping it along to the local MOT station earlier in the summer, it was the first time that I've ridden it in about four years (it has been looking pretty at the back of the garage whilst I played on other toys).
It felt great to be back on the 888, but imagine my surprise about halfway through the planned route when I finished an overtake at about 80mph, and as I approached the next left hander, my front brake lever came right back to the bar with no resistance... 😮
A few more pumps of the brake level, and I could feel a bit of pressure building, then I felt/heard a metal-on-metal noise, so I was pretty sure I knew what had happened. The road was pretty twisty from that point on, and a lot of traffic, so just used the engine braking to calm things down and carefully roll with the traffic until I got to a spot to do a visual inspection.
On the nearside calliper - the pin that retains the pads was gone, as was the inner pad. WTF!
Today, the parts arrived in the post to sort it out - new pads, pins and r-clips, and when I popped the offside calliper off (the one that still had the pin and both pads), here's what I found…
On the left is the pin that I removed, and on the right is the new, replacement pin and R-clip. The lower, thinner section of the pin where the r-clip locates had sheared!
This is almost certainly also the fate of the nearside retaining pin, and the reason that I lost a pad.
Clearly I didn't to a good enough job of inspecting everything whilst servicing it over the winter, but thought I'd post this as a reminder for everyone to check their callipers carefully. I'm going to proactively replace those retaining pins on all my bikes of that era.. they are 31 years old, after all and clearly a small, but safety critical part.
Mike
