New member, need help with brakes

Len,

I finished the front brake bleeding today, and with mucho gratefullness to the people that contribute their experience in the forum. The 1981 Yamaha XJ750 Seca, featuring a "remote" brake master cylinder, is a bear to bleed, 'when and if' you drain the system. Because the bike brakes held pressure before, I knew my components were in decent shape. But like a reasonable person, I says "Pat, the bike is 40 yrs old, lets re- condition the Critical components". I got pressure back into the system by bleeding ea group of 4 bleeder valves, in proper order, AND found I had to pump the hand lever 40 times before opening ea bleeder....it'd push a little fluid and couple bubbles...then I repeated the process...ohhh say 6-7 times till pressure began to build. It was slow, and hardly noticeable at first. After the 3rd round, the lever would stop 1/2" before the throttle (praise the Lord)...then it was just a matter of repeating the 'rounds' till the 1 or 2 tiny bubbles remaining in ea line were evacuated. Eventually, the bubbles were gone and the lever became firm.

Reverse bleeding the 1981 Remote Master Cylinder doesn't work well. I never saw air of any kind bubble out of the MC filler hole.(Now that I think of it, a bubble could have exited in the reservoir,but I would NOT be able to see it. (Unlike a NORMAL MC, where a tech/person can easily see into his MC with the square 1"x 2" CAP off!) Reverse bleeding to the MC only resulted in overflow from the reservoir filler hole! I stopped that. Reverse bleeding by pushing fluid using the handy syringe(lever taped to handlebar) causes fluid to leak from the cracked bleeder threads. Similarly, using the syringe to try and suck the fluid toward the bleeder would cause what.....(cmon everybody, not at once) ....it causes you to suck in air THRU those same bleeder threads......ughghghhgh. So none of the fluid was not making it "up" the line where I really needed it, in those pesky metal junctions above and just below the MC. I did crack the upper hard line(S shape) that enters the MC to at least try pushing air out up to that point. As an aside....I also put fluid in MC chamber and reservoir before "remotely" remounting. We won't discuss weazeling the MC back behind the Headlamp wires and into its "angled" mount! As I pre-loaded the MC bore with fluid I used a guitar string for 2 jobs 1) clear the tiny return hole, 2) to release air from bore as I added fluid(drop by drop) to cylinder outlet up top(no it did not leak out of the reservoir).

It took me longer to resolve this issue with spongy front brakes, primarily because I was impatient, and second guessing the work I had done; "why are the valve threads leaking, maybe my MC , or Caliper rebuild was flawed, was I following directions listed by LEN, Pollack and KMOE, why am I going thru so much fluid?, and so on.

All of my rebuild components came from Len. The level of detail he puts into packaging is excellant, he ships right away, and the color diagram for MC rebuild was perfect.

Thanks again and on to the next thing....test riding it!