Recently I’ve had 2 close calls on wet roads when my front wheel locked up in and emergency stop. There seemed nothing I could do as every time I applied the brake, the front wheel would lock up immediately so I slid instead of stopped. The front tyre is quite new and has plenty of tread. The back tyre is less than 1 year old.

In the first incident I managed to repeatedly apply the brake in a kind of manual ABS manner and caused my bike to stop just before impact, but in the second I suffered a minor impact.

What could be wrong? What can I check, repair or replace?

I will admit the brake line has a minor kink which was there when I bought the bike.

 

1st guess. Check/ measure rotor run out. Maybe bent.

 

Practice braking. I know sounds simple, but if you are locking up the front wheel you have to be applying too much pressure on the lever.
It sounds like this is a relatively new bike to you and the front brake may be vastly different from your previous bike.
Find a safe location to practice braking working up to "threshold" braking, the point just before the wheel locks and skids. It requires a delicate feel for the lever and smooth progressive pressure.

 

It doesn't take much to lock up a wheel on a wet road. Without the normal friction between the tire and road that keeps the tire spinning (friction and momentum of the bike) on a wet surface the brake doesn't have to overcome that friction and momentum to stop the tire from spinning. Besides pumping the brake you have to leave a lot more distance between you a the traffic ahead.

 

No mention of model
21" Pizza Cutter on the front ?

 

As 70% of your braking is at the front you need to be careful and practice.

 

Slow down when it's wet. Tires have a radius and there is less footprint on the road new then if it had 8 thousand miles. Of course, if you left them on way to long, they might have less grip.

I was overdriving the conditions and when a light went yellow I hit both brakes and noticed at first not slowing and then started hearing this strange low squeal. I bet I was 5 feet off rear bumper of car in front when it got stopped. I was well back when I hit brakes.

Lot of blue smoke and burnt rubber smell. Both tires I assume had slid.

I was on my Yamaha then. It was like new. Had huge dual calipers and stopped a whole lot better then my Harley.

You really don't mention age, model, milage or condition of your bike.

So many variables, your not going to get any kind of suggestion other then wild guessing. If pumping brake worked, I still guess you were driving too fast. Second guess is rotor is worn uneven. Low spot will let pad bite down further and when thicker side rolls up, wheel locks up.

Could even be build up on rotors you will see a brown patches.

 

Change your fluid and bleed. It would have to be a big kink in the line to affect braking. If anything it would have less stopping pressure. If it was mine I would rebuild master cyl, brake caliper and replace the kinked line. If you do it yourself depending on which line you go with under 200 in parts. You could piece it together if you want doing the brake line and bleeding first. As someone above said leave more distance. You should have been doing the above after the first close call.

 

One time in a hurry doing front pads on my Toyota truck at the time - I twisted the caliper and mounted it, so the front brake line had a kink in it. Panic stop came up shortly after and it locked that wheel up big time. Figured out what I had done while investigating the lock-up and corrected it. No more locking up prematurely.

Not saying that is the issue you have but I would certainly correct the "kink" you described.

 

The first thing you need to do is review your riding habits.