Duane Beery
Tuned and Synch'ed
I bought this 2007 Breva 750 last fall with 3500 miles on it. The PO had all the fluids changed but I decided to slowly do the 3000 mile check up over the winter, replacing and adjusting etc. The last thing was checking the brake fluid. the front was fine but the rear looked dark and dirty. I've done many brakes before on all kinds of vehicles including 40 year old hondas. I figured it should be easy and take just a few minutes. Not. I flushed all the old fluid out and refilled and flushed to clean, then fill and tried to bleed. I use a vacuum bleeder with normally great success but for some reason I could not get the air out of this system. I was pulling more air than fluid. By the time I went through an entire bottle of Dot 4 I fgured I'd better come in and get on this forum and do some research. It turns out it's a pretty common problem with these bikes without a definite solution. Everybody seemed to do something different to fix their issues. I felt the bike is low mileage enough to not have to replace anything just yet and the brakes worked fine before the fluid change.
My solution that worked was this. One person mentioned he thought the problem was the bleeder screw on the rear caliper was low instead of on top where the air would go. So I unbolted the caliper and the two hose brackets, brought the caliper to the reservoir side and flipped it upsdie down so the bleeder was on top. I put it in a plastic pan and kept it below the level of the brake master. I also put a thin piece of wood similar to the width of the rear disc rotor to prevent the pistons from being pushed out. Then bled it just using the foot brake lever. It worked! Only took a couple of tries to get pressure in the foot pedal. Did a few more bleed cycles and called it good. Seems to be holding fine.
Just putting this out there in case the next person has the same issue.
My solution that worked was this. One person mentioned he thought the problem was the bleeder screw on the rear caliper was low instead of on top where the air would go. So I unbolted the caliper and the two hose brackets, brought the caliper to the reservoir side and flipped it upsdie down so the bleeder was on top. I put it in a plastic pan and kept it below the level of the brake master. I also put a thin piece of wood similar to the width of the rear disc rotor to prevent the pistons from being pushed out. Then bled it just using the foot brake lever. It worked! Only took a couple of tries to get pressure in the foot pedal. Did a few more bleed cycles and called it good. Seems to be holding fine.
Just putting this out there in case the next person has the same issue.
