Hello all, noticed today when I was getting ready to ride home from work that my rear brake is sticking. I step on the food pedal and it stay down, I have to pull it up by hand.

Looked in the service manual and only see a sections that deals with adjusting rear brake height.

Can any one steer me in the right direction on what I should do?

Thanks!

Note: I did take a safety course the other week in which we were using are brakes quite a bit, dont know if that could have something to do with it or not.

 

The first thing I would look at is to see if the rear caliper pistons are moving freely. If it isn't take the caliper out and clean the piston and bore. If it is moving freely, check to make sure the pivot point for the brake pedal has enough lube. If that seems fine, make sure the linkage from the brake pedal to m/c isn't hanging up on something.

 

Mine used to do the same thing and I tried fixing it by spraying lube on the pivot points etc. It helped a little but nothing solved the problem until I noticed in the forward control install instructions that you are supposed to have anti seize on the brake pedal pivot shaft.
Look at page 2 step 10 under rear brake assembly http://www.harley-davidson.com/en_US...ts/-J03509.pdf

What is weird is that the black forward control instructions just say to apply a lubricant while the chrome specifies anti seize.
I'm just glad it worked and I haven't had a sticking problem since.

 

Since you ask on here I can only assume you really do not know about the mechanical and hydraulic parts of your brake. Could be either. It would be best with this type of problem that you trailer your bike to a qualified mechanic. Many may be able to walk you thru something simple but depending on what it is the brakes may fell leaving you without the rear or actually could lock up at speed causing a serious accident.

 

I had this happen with a POS thunderheader. It turned out that the brake rod was touching the mount when you pushed the pedal down.

 

I took a couple of pics, not sure if this will help in identifying anything that may be the cause....

And yep, I am a noob at brakes on Harleys

 

The wifey just got home so I had a extra pair of hands to help.... When pushing on rear brake I can see that the caliper pushes the pad a little, and when pulling the pedal back up, the caliper only backs out a little, but doesnt look like it pulls back enough.

I guess I will start with cleaning the caliper and bore....

Thanks for the suggesting guys and feel free to keep them coming

 

Seriously unless you know what your doing ( and you wouldnt be asking if you did) DONT touch the caliper, take it to someone who does.

that said, i would first check the brake pedal pivot point. easy to do by undoing the brake rod at pedal, check if pedal moves freely, if all ok there, reconnect and follow the rod back to the master cylinder ensuring the rod is moving freely and not sticking or catching on anything,check hydrolics for loss off fluid etc. if by then you havent spotted the problem take it to nearest indy or stealer.

 

Thanks for the advice bro, I do have a Indy guy here to help me out. I didnt mean to imply that I was going to attempt this myself, I meant that with the help of my Indy bro, thats whats probably going to happen

 

no worries, alth i would still work from pedal backwards as it is more likely the problem would be there than the caliper.