How to Remove a Motorcycle Master Cylinder

Video Transcript

"On behalf of Expert Village, my name is Seth Williams and I work for D-K Service and I am here to tell you about simple street bike brake repair and inspection. The third step in this process is going to be able to remove our faulty master cylinder so that I can rebuild it. This particular motorcycle has a guard plate so that you don't kick your master cylinder with your foot while you are riding obviously. You could see the foot peg here. This long actuator arm is what actuates the brake pedal. You will need to dismount this system from the pedal from the guard via these two bolts here. So we will take the two bolts off and this is a number 5 millimeter Allen wrench. Like I said before we were working with metric. Most of your motorcycles will be. Sometimes they use Lock Tight on brake parts so be weary of that. Sometimes they do snap, just be careful. As you can see, that swings out of the way. You'll take a 12 millimeter wrench and undo your brake line from the master cylinder. Now once that is done, grab a pair of needle nose pliers. There is a small cotter pin on the backside of this brake pedal that you will need to get at. This cotter pin is in a touch position so I am struggling with it a little bit. Like I said earlier, sometimes you need to cut them with a pair of vice or anything like that. So what I will do now is get down there and cut this apart and then replace it with a cotter pin when I am reinstalling these parts. that way I don't have to deal with this particular problem. There it goes, right there. After that is out, hold this pin out and the washer that comes with it. Make sure that all stays together. Now once that is apart, you can see my master cylinder is free. Of course, I am going to have to take the reservoir hose off. As you can see, there is a lot of brake fluid involved in this and brake fluid is specifically dangerous to paint. Make sure that if it gets on any of the paint or chrome finish of your motorcycle, you clean it off with some kind of dissolvent so that you don't strip your paint out. "