Two more questions: bleeding brakes and fixing broken plastic bits

Hi everyone!

First question:

So, I went out to put the rear tail section of my new plastics on the bike and see how things look. The problem is that the tail light assembly mounting tabs are broken. I have the broken off bits and am thinking I can just glue them back into place. What kind of plastic is it? If it's ABS, I should use ABS cement, right? It's the black plastic on the tail light assembly... Let me know what kind of glue to to use! Or, I do have a friend with a plastic welder, but there's not a lot of room to work with, so I thought glue or epoxy would be my better choice.

Second question: brake bleeding on a stock system. Holy crap. I read through my manual, and it is quite the procedure. Unless I'm reading things wrong, the manual is calling for me to drain out the rear brake system completely? That can't be right. Is there a good write-up on a brake bleeding procedure for the labyrinth of a system these bikes have? Jesus.

Thanks in advance!

 

Get an air-c0mpressor with a Mity-Vac brake air bleeder and that will solve ur problems, other-wise ur gona be fucked....plain and siimple....linked brakes/ABS=LAME BRAIN BS car think crap...Dont get me started on FI ...Anywhooo....gud luk

 

For plastics, I used a Harbor Freight ABS welding iron (nice large head), the screen reinforcing in the kit and some ABS rod. Weld up the crack, build it up bigger and then sand smooth.

MEK is the way to go for chemical fixes. If you can't find pure MEK, then buy the ABS glue from Home Depot. It's cheap and it is nothing more than MEK with some ABS dissolved in it.

FYI - From what I gather, ABS is ABS. It differs in some of the additives that make it more UV resistant, but the ABS pipe you buy in the store is basically the same stuff that is in your bike plastics. I bought some ABS pipe and cut it into strips. That was a quick way to save money on purpose made ABS welding rods. Then I used an old school pencil sharpener to make the rods into powder. I tested it by dissolving some powder with the ABS glue and ended up with an amoeba shaped puck. So you should be able to use the glue and powder to either seal a crack or fill in a missing area. I still prefer the welding as it imbeds metal screen and really pulls the cracked edges together.

For bleeding brakes, I heartily endorse the HF vacuum bleeder. It's on sale right now for $25



Brake Fluid Bleeder

Jose

 

Thanks for the input, guys. Regarding the tail light assembly: I'm not sure how feasible it will be to plastic weld the tabs back into place. The pieces that broke off are very small. The surface that I will be gluing/plastic welding is probably less than a 1/2 square inch. I'll have a second look at it when I get home from work tonight...

And bleeding the brakes: well, shit. I just looked at a bunch of other threads on here and plenty of people are asking the same questions. I'm going to read the factory manual procedure and compare it to my Haynes manual. The front brake system looks fairly straight forward, however the rear brake system is what is stumping me.

Once I figure it out, I will tackle the job with a camera and a notebook, and then maybe write up a step by step for this site! How would ya'll like that?

 

I would like that very much. Thanks.

 

We heard this before.........lol Good luck and keep us inform of your progress.