In an earlier post, I mentioned that mistake I made when I laid the bike down and broke the brake lever. Whether you need to replace a broken brake lever or are looking to make a change to a different model for comfort or looks, here are some easy instructions to fix your brake lever.
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What is the sacrificial notch?
When I broke my brake lever, it lost the ball at the “sacrificial notch”. This is an area of the lever that is purposefully weakened so that if you do what I did (drop the bike), the lever will break off at the ball instead of breaking the lever fully.
Wow, were those folks smart! My brake lever worked fine without the little ball at the end, but I still wanted to fix it. I can’t imagine how I would have gotten the bike back on the road had the lever broken fully off.
The good news is that the brake lever is easy to fix or upgrade yourself.
The simple tools you need to fix your brake lever
You do need a few tools to prepare for your fix. The first thing you need to have is a new brake lever. You can either replace the OEM part, or find an aftermarket replacement (you’ll probably want to replace both the brake lever and the clutch to match if you choose an aftermarket product).
You’ll also need some lube (lithium grease or white lithium grease will work), a screwdriver (Phillips head on mine, but check first), and a socket wrench.
Fixing the lever in three steps
- Remove the nut and bolt holding the lever in place.
It’s easier to remove with two hands so you can hold one side and turn on the other. Once the nut is removed, slide the bolt out and set aside.
- Slide the lever off.
This might take a little wiggling but should come off quickly now that the nut and bolt are removed.
- Put the new lever in its place.
You should see a rod that the brake lever will align with. Make sure your new lever lines up with this. You can put a little lubricant on the rod and the bolt when you reattach and tighten in place.
That’s it! Now you will want to pull the brake lever a few times and check for tightness or anything unusual. Check to make sure the brake light comes on when pulling on the front brake lever.
Take it for a test spin, but don’t full throttle right away. Take it a little easy testing the brakes as you go.
Simple.
Let me know about your motorcycle maintenance in the comments!
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