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Clicking Noise Under Braking

4K views 15 replies 3 participants last post by  Will 
#1 ·
My s4 makes a clicking racheting noise under hard braking. It almost sound like the sprocket slipping the chain, but tension is all in spec.

1st time it happened I was pulling up to a light and forgot to downshift and was maybe in 4th gear at a low rpm low speed. I was braking with the bike in gear and heard it. So I let go of the brake and downshifted.

2nd time I heard it was when I was really trying to brake hard for a light and may have locked up a bit. But this time I had the clutch pulled in when I heard it.

Is it just the chain slapping the swing arm? Or the rear brake slipping? 9900 miles on the bike.
 
#5 ·
Have you adjusted the chain? I don't know off hand what the noise you describe might be. The front brake disks are floating disks, which means there's a tiny amount of play on the pins that they are mounted with, but you shouldn't hear that.
 
#9 ·
It just occurred to me that if you have a slight warp in one disk, it may be banging back and forth on the rivets. It may not be a big deal since the whole reason for letting the disks float is so they can heat and cool unevenly and change shape when that happens without causing problems with function. The rivets have spring washers that center the disk most of the time, if I'm remembering right. If one of those is missing or non-functional, I can imagine the disk rattling around a bit more. I haven't taken the disk off its carrier, so I can't tell you what that project would be like. A first step would be to give the disks a good cleaning with disk cleaner solvents and see if that helps. Brake pad material can build up on the disks. That usually causes pulsing, not rattles. But, it's something cheap and easy to try to see if it makes a difference. Worst case you will have clean disks and the brakes will work better when the pads bed in again.
 
#11 ·
I have used all kinds of different pads. They have different feels, but everything I have used so far works well enough. Brakes on a TT600 or S4 should be incredibly powerful. What happens is that the brake fluid deteriorates over time, as do the insides of the brake lines. By now, the brakes on one of those bikes should be thoroughly cleaned and rebuilt to get the braking performance back to what it was like when the bike was new. That's just an aside that has nothing to do with the clicking or whirring noise.

Clicking might be the brake disks moving back and forth on their mounts. If so, it's not a problem.
 
#13 ·
Take 'em completely apart, wash everything in a Simple Green solution, rinse thoroughly, make sure it's all dry, then reassemble with new seals, etc. When you reassemble the calipers and master cylinder, you have to lubricate the seals with brake fluid before you put them in. If you are at all nervous about doing this, don't do it, since brakes are pretty important. No brakes gets really exciting and then really expensive if it happens in the wrong place.
 
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