If your resovoir is low on fluid steep hills or roll overs will let air in the line. Keep them topped off as your brake wear.

 

I just had a set of performance brake pads put on the rear and 2 hours of riding later,they wont even lock in the sand!!!!!they suck!!!(05 scrammy)

 

I have to bleed my auxiliary brake (foot pedal) about every 6 months, then it works fine (locks the tires up if I wish). For some reason though, it gets air in the line and has to be bled.

 

I bleed the rear brake every time i change the motor oil. It seems wrong, but it's the only way I can keep it functioning. With a hot seat kit, does the pedal work the rear, and the hand lever only the fronts? I think that would work great because I' m not a fan of the triple setup.

 

Hey guys.. I am going to go out on a limb here and offer a bit for discussion. It seems to me that many people have the problem that the brakes need to be bled because they are getting air in the rear brake circuit. It also seems apparent that seals are not leaking fluid, so they are not shot.

Here is my thoughts. When the rear brake pedal is up, (not pushed) the hand brake will engage the rear brake slave cylinder. When the rear brake slave piston moves, (due to the hand brake) fluid must be drawn from the rear brake pedal reservoir through the rear brake circuit. Now if by chance, the rear pedal were pushed slightly closing off the reservoir (while the hand brake was used), instead of drawing fluid from the rear brake pedal reservoir, it must in effect suck the rear pedal down. Seems to me, that this vauum could instead suck air past the seals. So even though the seal is intact (keeping fluid from leaking) it may still draw air past.

So it sems there are two solutions. One is to put a much better seal in the brake pedal master cylinder, this sometimes works because some people have success by changing the master cylinder. The second solution might just be that the rear pedal spring is old and not holding the pedal up so that fluid can come from the rear brake reservoir.

Any thoughts or opinions?
Bryce

 

you might be on to something with that pedal spring....it seems that it only has like one inch of travel...and mine is practically new?

 

sounds good but, the rear caliper is split.Another words,,there is two pistons in the rear brake.the rear foot brake oil is separated from the front brake oil inside the caliper.if the seal that separates the two halfs of the calipers fail You will know it because,if you hold the rear foot brake down and pull in the hand brake the fluid will push your foot back up or visa versa. (I'v had it happen) so, the only way the front and the rear fluids(rezzy or master cylinders) could ever effect each other is if the gasket in the caliper goes bad.I had the caliper apart along with the whole brake system and the best thing i came up with is to use the hot seat system.since I have used the hot seat slit kit and I haven't had any rear brake issues and I have been using the system since 2001.
as for the hot seat system--it allows you to set it up a few different ways but one way you would need to get another steal brake line.The kit has a hand brake and a slitter box.You can hook it up were the hand brake does all the work and not even have a foot brake or you can leave the foot brake and slit it so one hand brake cotrols the front and the other controlls the rear along with the foot brake. you can leave it stock ,where the front brake ,when used,controlls the rear brake too but, with that way you would need that extra brake line I wrote about.The way I have it is with No foot brake and No front brake feed, then I slit the line going to the rear brake from the other hand brake so I could make both pistons in the caliper grip the disc.

If that is hard to understand,I'm sorry,I'll try to to make understandable next time if you guys/gals want to know something

 

Hello Fixitmatt. My point is not to modify the braking system, but simply fix the problem that is wrong. The problem is that air gets into the rear brake circuit. The air cannot enter at the rear brake piston, so it must happen at the rear pedal master cylinder. The reason it cannot enter at the rear brake slave cylinder is because the rear brakes are the inner piston. If that seal leaked, we would not get air. Although the seal between the two circuits may fail, the predominant mode of failure is air in the rear brake circuit. It seems to me that if people can fix their rear brakes by only replacing the rear pedal spring with a stronger spring, that is significantly simpler than replacing half the braking system.
Bryce

 

Polaris has been pretty good about updating/tweaking their designs lately. I see so many complaints on here of poorly performing rear brakes, it seems they would make some changes to this system.

 

I agree Scooter86. Although I think the source of the problem is not so apparent. That's one of the reasons I am curious to gets some ideas going. It seems that air in the rear brakes seems be the problem. Now the question is, how is the air getting in. I looked at the reservoir, and as long as it has fluid in it and the quad is not turned on its side or upside down like Drttrack97 says, no air can get through the reservoir.
Bryce