Why does Honda hate their customers so much?

[roflwaffle]

What year is your goldwing?

[Frank Lee]

1982.

If Honda Motorsports was in charge of rebuilt Chevrolet V8s, I bet they'd charge $100,000 for each one.

I have the front calipers apart right now. The pistons are serviceable (not perfect but not shot) and the bores are as well. I'm going to re-use the seals, as the piston seals aren't torn or overly damaged. The piston dust seals look kinda crappy but they aren't torn either so back in they go. The slider seals are bad but I'll put em back on anyway and just grease the slider pins generously. The main problems I'm dealing with at this time are corrosion in the seal grooves, and one piston (ain't there ALWAYS one???) that won't come out with air pressure.

For cleaning out the grooves I guess holding an allen wrench with a pliars makes a sort of OK cleaning tool. For that last piston I'll have to complete servicing the other front caliper, install it, reconnect the other caliper to the line, and pump that SOB out with hydraulic pressure.

[roflwaffle]

You may be in luck, at least according to this. I have a couple CB650SCs so LMK if ya need pistons, or at least that last piston.

[Frank Lee]

Stainless... niiiice!

Won't get to that last piston til tomorrow.

[Ryland]

Alot of the cost in parts is storage and inventory of those 25 year old parts that came from Japan, the brake calipers square o-ring seals also act as a return spring for the piston, as it is what pulls the piston away from the brake pad/disk so your brakes don't drag.

[TestDrive]

FWIW. I used to work on vibroseis trucks (20 tons curb weight).

This one appears to be an LRS 315

Truck part: International Paystar 5000 6x6; International DT466 engines (front & rear) with Alison MT5000 5sp Automatic Transmission.
The vibroseis part: a separate diesel motor drove a 3000 psi 80 gallon per minute hydraulic pump used to osilate an 8 ton mass to impart a sweeping seismic wave into the ground. The sweeps (multiple trucks - usually 5 or 6 but up to as many as 20 on a couple of occasions) were controlled by electronics in each truck; triggered by a single radio signal from a recording truck. Torque motor, main and secondary servos, main mass, 4 way valve, lift cylinders, 4 accumulators ...

Anyway there were a ton of different o-rings in various sizes; some with round cross sections, some square cross sections, some 90 durometer, some 70 durometer (durometer roughly equaled how hard/stiff the rubber was - how much pressure it could stand up to.) We tried to keep a stock of all the various sizes, but naturally there were times when we ran through them quicker than expected. At that point we got out the Loctite O-ring Splicing kit. It came with 70 durometer o-ring material. We tried to not ever run out of the 90 durometer o-rings, but when we did we'd cut down a larger o-ring that had the same cross sectional size. The spliced o-rings seemed to hold up just as well as the regular ones.

[Frank Lee]

Ryland: Honda used to be somewhat decent about using a "parts bin" approach to engineering- if they already had a suitable part on the shelf from something else, they'd use it. Yeah. Parts commonality = good for simplicity and customers.

Now it seems they completely re-engineer the entire machine every year so that not even the bolts interchange. Special parts = profit for them.

You are right about the function of the square O-ring.

Testdrive: Cool, I'd completely forgotten about splicing O-rings! But... I won't be doing that on my square caliper seals. I'd be OK with it for the dust seals. In fact, I'm not particularly impressed with the effectiveness of the design of the original dust seals (ribbed). If the ones I have were in any worse condition I'd stick regular round O-rings in there and I bet they'd work just fine.

[Ford Man]

I had a similar problem with my '82 Yamaha 1100 a couple years ago and lots of my parts had been discontinued, but I finally found them at a premium price. You might try soaking the calipers in brake cleaner and just working with them a little bit each day for a few days to help free the piston. It doesn't matter what brand you motorcycle is parts for them are going to cost you a premium price because they are considered recreational vehicles.

[Frank Lee]

Well I just discovered that my little two mile test ride the other day- the one where I discovered the caliper problem- caused one of the front rotors to heat up to where it warped.

Well, the ocean is nearby so maybe I'll just dump the whole thing in there.

[elhigh]

You shoulda seen the bill when I was looking for parts for my '73 7e Yamaha.

Might be 7something else, I forget it's been so long. But dang, some parts it needed were nowhere to be found in North America. Or Mexico. Or Japan. Japan! I mean, that's where it's from! They should have at least a few of the dang things still tootling around over there, rght? No leftover parts at all?

Nuts.

Maybe I'll have better luck with the '82 Express!