Brake lever feels like air in lines

I can squeeze the brake levers and they brake and lock up fine. Although I can continue to sqeeze until the levers hit the handle bars. In a car I would compare it to getting air into the brake lines. The little displays look full. Is this normal?

It could be air, but it could also be the rubber brake lines expanding under the pressure. You might want to take a good close look at the brake lines and see if you can find any signs of rubber deteriation.

This is why high performance vehicles use braided steel brake lines... they don't give under pressure.

tubeck wrote:

I can squeeze the brake levers and they brake and lock up fine. Although I can continue to sqeeze until the levers hit the handle bars.

When did you change the brake fluid last???

I just bought the swing a month ago. I will check the lines for swelling , but I am thinking cars and didn't know that changing brake fluid was nessesary.

Brake fluid attracts water and with you living hear in Florida their is a lot of humidity.

Worth reading:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brake_fluid

Here is another brake fluid article http://www.aa1car.com/library/bfluid.htm

Here is a useful graph from the webpage listed above:

My Silver Wing does the same thing, & it's 3 years old & well-maintained. I have to squeeze pretty hard to bring the levers back to the grips. If you have to squeeze hard to do that, & otherwise the brakes are acting OK, I wouldn't worry about it. If however, you DON'T have to squeeze very hard to get the levers all the way back, then you may have a problem.

My husband's 1997 Honda Shadow Spirit VT1100 brakes do the same thing. The only way to prevent it, as others have said, is to get stainless steel lines. The rubber (or more like neoprene) lines will by nature tend to have more "give," even if you don't have any deterioration (especially in a humid climate).

Others may disagree, but I think that Honda engineers would be aware of this & will have figured this into the design.

As long as the brakes behave normally otherwise, there's no deterioration of the brake lines, & the brake fluid is fresh & up to the fill line, you're probably OK.

Does the brakes gradually come back to the handlebars as you squeeze them? you could have a leak in the master cylinder if so. My front brakes did that to me. I could squeeze the brakes and eventually my lever would be back at the handlebar and I'd have no stopping, but I could release and pull again to get braking. I changed the master cylinder and it's back to factory new again.

Also noticed that the brake lever didn't come back as far when I installed new pads, could yours be due for replacement soon? I did mine around 20k.