No Surprises Are Better

[Road Scholar]

My apologies for my absence, y'all have been taking good care of this section of the Ducati forum.

My attentions have been focused on a 1975 Norton Commando Roadster that I found in Portland, Maine that had been sitting in the sellers dining room for the past 27 years!!!!! But I digress...

The substance of this entry is to focus on the Hyper's front brakes, clear overkill in my view as well as most of the moto journalists. When I plan out my braking when setting up a corner or an apex I have this wonderful feeling that one or two fingers will work nicely, and they have.

The other day a car pulled out in front of me, making a left turn, the most lethal. I saw the car, I made eye contact, but the sumbitch pulled out anyway. I nailed the brakes, both of them, and I nailed them hard. The net result was that the Hyper stood up on its front wheel and nearly threw me off, way too much braking way to hard applied, a classic panic reaction--I was paniced, I admit it.

Guilty as charged!

So here are the questions:

1) Is there a way to hard wire an emergency brake response?

2) Does it make sense to remove one of the Hypers front braking systems to make it less sensitive---if so what are the technical issuse??

Your thoughts??

RS

[Caidly]

Glad you're OK.

I have been practicing using my rear brake to settle in the front for a few years now. I had a similar incident a year ago and instead of locking the front, my rear began to come around, which saved me as it turned me in the right (proper) direction to avoid the collision.

Now while I use the rear on the street almost all the time, I almost never touch it on the track. It is something that just turns off automatically in my head.

Again, glad you made it out of this one. Hope you stopped, turned around and beat the crap out that biotch!

[Da_Bull]

I love the Hyper's rear brakes and use them a lot to settle the bike ... especially when I'm leaned over in a corner.

The fronts on my bike, however, don't seem to be overdone ... in reality, I prefer having too much brake at my disposal rather than not enough. BTW, I have the cellar-dwelling base model version.

[kingsnake1650]

you could do away with a caliper and rotor if you wanted. Really all you would have to do is remove them and replace the brake line with a single line going to a single caliper.
That said I wouldnt do it.. It seems to me that it would be better for you to find a place to practice panic stops and "hardwire" yourself to do the right thing when in trouble. I DaBull to much is better than not enough. You can alway ease up on the lever, but if theres not enough there the lever only goes in so far.

[AXE]

Yeah, I think the brakes on the base model are just right. Perhaps you could swap with someone or get a set from someone parting out a bike.

Out!

[colacin]

Hey Road, I had a similar thing happen to me - but the reason for my panic stop was a group of idiots standing in the middle of a busy street.

The best way I can think of to do a permanent solution would be to swap the master cylinder/lever for something which requires a harder pull. You'd still have plenty of power but a panic grab wouldn't be as abrupt.

[wjn]

I had something similar when I just picked it up (S version). Someone on a roundabout stopped for no reason at all, and I was surprised and hit the brakes, locking the front. Luckely nothing went wrong.

The brakes on the standard version should be "milder", but as i recall this is more due different brake pads.

You can (next to praktise, praktise, praktise) try different kind of brake pads.

[MongoWERA]

Sounds like it worked fine in the panic situation, a stoppie isn't the end of the world...

[st2lemans]

During a test ride of a HM 110S, it went into a tankslapper because I hit a slight bump while braking for a corner and as a result the braking went from gentle to overkill and the front dove and became unstable. Luckily, I was able to ride it out.

I think that if I vwere to buy a HM, I would remove one of the disks.

Tom

[MongoWERA]

With the S it really is one finger braking - you don't need all of them. It's really not that hard to modulate the brakes to give yourself the proper amount for what is going on.