| Author | Message | ||
     Trevd |
So yesterday I replaced the front brake fluid. While bleeding the brakes, I was pumping the brake lever while sitting on a stool down my the caliper. At one point I noticed that brake fluid was popping out of the reservoir, and landing all over my bike... dash and all. I panicked a bit fearing paint peeling off and all, got up and cleaned up with paper towels, and some windex. All was fine, finished the job and left the bike alone in the garage for the night. This morning, go to take the bike out, and find this:    What the hell has happened? Could it be that the brake fluid did something?? | ||
| Etennuly |
It probably soaked into the lexan lens and made it swell up too much to handle. Brake fluid has weird affects on different things. It will melt lacquer, acrylics, and enamel paints like it was paint stripper. It can distort and swell some plastics and melt right into some while not touching others. It would probably had cleaned off better simply with water. I do not recommend trying this at all.....but a few years back I was bleeding the rear brakes on a pick up with an assistant pumping the brakes. I always break the bleeders loose before instilling a helper, so that was not a problem. When I cracked the bleeder loose the hole was partially plugged. Upon the first try nothing happened so my assistant stepped harder on the pedal. The result was a jet stream of old brake fluid under high pressure, that shot over three feet directly past the edge of my safety glasses into my eye socket. It came with such force that it went into the eye socket in quantity. I figured my life as I had known it was over. I just knew this could not be good having that much brake fluid forced around my eye. I thought for sure blindness would happen. I ran to the water hose to flush it out, that in itself is hard to do, holding your eye open to flush it with the force of a garden hose. Well then I went to the house to try a reasonable flush out. Then a wash out with contac lens solution, twenty minutes later and all was well. No ill effects, no pain, no vision problems, nothing, right back to normal! I could not believe brake fluid, that can so easily strip paint, eat certain plastics and rubber stuff, would have no affect what so ever on the tenderness of an eyeball. Makes no sense to me, I will gladly accept it's physical properties in my case though. | ||
| Ratbuell |
...you're just hard headed... | ||
| Ourdee |
epoxy resin. | ||
| Trevd |
Ourdee, that was my next question - how to fix it. I'll look into epoxy resin... Thanks! | ||
| Etennuly |
..you're just hard headed... So?  | ||
| Rayycc1 |
i would fix the outer...black part with epoxy resin...I would get some like thickness lexan and cut a new lens though | ||
| Natexlh1000 |
Be aware that epoxy will turn yellow in the sun after a while. I used it on my various bits of broken crap hanging off of my old '86 civic. (headlights, turn signals....) Perhaps they sell some special anti-UV type? | ||
| Trevd |
yellow is no good! I was originally thinking that I would just put a bit of silicone along the crack... Not sure what I'll do with it. | ||
| Etennuly |
Are these lens/covers not available? Perhaps a used speedo unit with the guts swapped? | ||
| Froggy |
The gauge cluster is only available as an assembly, no getting just the lens. Swapping the lens/frame off another cluster would work, hard part is finding one on ebay for a reasonable price that hasn't been destroyed |
