Team-BHP - Royal Enfield Himalayan ABS: Front brake jammed on the move!

Quote:

Originally Posted by AbhiIyengar (Post 4542032)

Can you all share the RCA or the report for the benefit of other REH owners?

Thanks!

Sorry for the very late reply. The RCA was done and this is what we found out.

Every time the front brake level was squeezed hard, the brake would engage and the bike would immediately start slowing down. As as side effect, the bike would dip because of the front shocker compressing. At this time, the brake line was being pinched due to its weird routing down the fork and would cut of the flow of brake oil to the lower section of the line. When the brake was released, the bike should immediately have stopped braking since the brake is no longer being applied. But this would not happen as the oil trapped in the lower section is still causing the slave cylinder to remain activated. This caused the bike to keep slowing down and in turn the shocker still being compressed and in turn the brake line still remaining pinched, causing the whole loop to continue... Till the time the bike had shed enough speed to have let the shocker rebound again immediately normalizing the pressure and deactivating the brake.

This why it happened only when slamming the front brake hard. At lower braking intensities, the bike would would not dip enough to cause the pinch. The ASC guys opened everything and put it back together several times only to realize right at the end that the brake line was nearly ruptured due to the constant pinching. They promptly replaced it and the routing was done carefully.

However, the solution looks temporary. Funny reason for that: if the brake line is installed while the bike is on main stand (shockers fully extended,) when you get the bike off the stand, due to the huge static sag, the line looks very loose (and caused the pinching in the first place.) But if its done on side stand, when you get the bike on to the main stand, its immediately overstretched and could even brake/tear. Their R&D dept. should definitely look into this. Wonder how these problems are handled on other bikes with long front suspension travel

Since then, no issues whatsoever with my bike. If any one ever faces this issue on any bike, first inspect the entire visible length of the brake line.

Cheers.

Quote:

Originally Posted by naturaldisaster (Post 4630368)

Since then, no issues whatsoever with my bike. If any one ever faces this issue on any bike, first inspect the entire visible length of the brake line.

That in just plain careless to say the least, a few of us here including myself aren't running on stock parts hence we reroute our brake lines on our own yet never reported anything similar.

If it helps, this is how I've routed mine, since it's longer than adequate I simply looped it around the fork so that even when the suspension compresses the line won't interact with anything else.