PapaTom wrote:
It's late and I haven't had din-din yet (not sure what language that is but for now we'll call it Klingon).

That's Grandparent talk..... BB

Heh, it sure is BB. And "baba", "night-night" and all the silly stuff. It's great.

Okay. Doc had asked if the brake line was touching the pipe. It wasn't, but part of the plunger assembly was. I'd mentioned earlier the brake armature (plunger assy) was touching the header when the pedal was released. Well, since it took a mile or two for the problem to come up, I figured it sounded like some kind of heat problem.

A little part of the joint was definitely touching the pipe, so it would make sense it would heat up after a while, maybe causing some metal expansion, then binding. When the pedal stuck the last 2 times, I had to physically force the pedal back up, pumped it a few times, then it was okay for a while.

So I loosened the header bolts, the bolt joining the slip-on to the header, and the slip-on bolt to the frame. Then I pushed on the header a little to moved it away from the brake armature, tightened everything, and now the armature is no longer touching the header pipe. I didn't need to adjust the header much at all.

I'm going to take the bike out in a little while to see if my theory was either correct or a bunch of doo-doo. I'm including a pic of where the "problem area" could have been. This is after moving the header away from the armature.

I can't remember what the stock set up looked like but it sure seems you should have more clearance than that?

Normally yes. But adding the bars pushed the floorboard away from the frame another 1/4" or so, making the brake armature closer to the pipe.

Just got back from a 45 minute trip around the backroads and the brake pedal worked great. Even though the armature is still pretty close to the pipe (at least it isn't touching any more), it looks like there's enough of a gap to allow the wind to dissipate the heat. Gonna take her out again a bit later to test it. What a lousy way to see if something works, eh?

Everyone, thanks again!

Tom

Glad to see you got the problem fixed papatom. The bar looks good on there.