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Area51 Project Foreman - Front Disc Brake Kit:
After many years of faithful service from the stock drum front brakes, I finally grew tired of the constant maintenance required to keep them dry & working properly.
I broke down and ordered an awesome Disc Brake upgrade kit by Quadrax from Honda One here in St. John's. I found it to be a very well designed kit that installed with relative ease.
First you have to remove the wheel and the stock drum brakes, including the backing plate that the brake hardware bolts to. I recommend pinching the brake line with proper hose clamps to prevent all of the fluid draining from the system, I neglected to do this and made bleeding the system later more difficult.
The next step is to remove the stock wheel lugs from the hub, the kit uses longer ones to compensate for the wheel spacers needed with the kit. The instructions say to press them out but after splitting my bench vice in two, I knocked them out with a large hammer as they wont ever be reused. I installed and seated the new studs by placing them in the hole, stacking washers over the stud, and tightening a wheel lug nut to pull the new stud into place. Once this is done the brake rotor can be mated with the hub following the instructions and hardware in the kit.
Next you bolt the calliper mounting bracket to the knuckle following the instructions using the supplied hardware, and the new calliper connected to the brake line. I temporarily bolted it to the mounting bracket for this step.
Next the awesome looking hub/rotor assembly was installed on the bike, castle nut secured and torqued, and the the brake calliper installed. Its important to note that both front wheel bearings should be checked and replaced if they are worn, loose or rough. Once the installation was complete on the opposite side I started bleeding the system. It's very important that you install the callipers with the bleeder on top, if not the system will not bleed correctly. Since I let all of the brake fluid drain from the system, bleeding took quite awhile. Since the master cylinder reservoir went dry it took forever to get all of the air out and fluid flowing in the lines. Once the system was bled the brake lever became nice and firm.
The installation was completed by installing the new wheel spacers and finally the front wheels. The wheel spacers are necessary so that there is no contact between the brake calliper and the inside of the wheel. Also important to note is that this kit requires you to use at least a 12" wheel to clear the callipers, fortunately Foreman 450's come stock with 12" wheels.
The new brakes work great, they didn't stop great at first, but after a couple miles of riding the pads broke in and stopping power was awesome. I did have one minor problem, I didn't pay particular attention to the angle at which the brake hose came out of the right side brake calliper. When the wheel was turned the brake hose rubbed on the inside of the wheel eventually causing a leak. Miffed at my mistake I ordered a new front brake hose from Honda One and installed it later the following week. Cheers, MIKE
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Copyright © 2011 Michael Smith
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