... now I'm worried I have a 9 year old 850GS with 54K .... my bike is a non ABS model... is this also prone to this... checked last night & couldn't see any signs of damage to that particular pipe BUT the lh pipe has a groove worn in it from the speed cable
Hi Baldrick,
I think the non-ABS models will
not have this problem. The reason is a design-inherent one. On non-ABS bikes, the whole brake line is assembled on the "steering subsystem". The only movements
inside this system is the suspension travel, which results in a certain
flection of the brake lines. This is no problem for them.
But
torsion definitely is a problem - especially for our beloved "hard" steel-braided lines. They do *not* like any torsion. Therefore I am not fully persuaded that in this special case a steel-braided line is the optimal solution.
I found this out while mounting my new brake lines: you can adjust the fittings for steering neutral position, but the line resolutely "wants to follow" if you turn the bar.
See here for more (sorry - german...)
The only solution would be to rotate the plane of the lower fitting into the plane that the steering describes
confused: hope my english is understandable...). In this case, the screw would be parallel to the steering head. As a result, the brake line would also only be bent instead of twisted. For this, the "mounting point" would have to be moved farther back under the gas tank.
As for the 1150: they have the same design here.
So it should be only the age which makes this more of an issue for the 1100/850.
BTW: just registered here and stumbled into this interesting fred at once...!