Just got back from the Tennesee hog rally..really wet week but still had a good time. On the way home started noticing front brakes pulsing..to the point u could feel it in the brake lever..anyone else experience this? 17 RGS

 

Of course people have experience this, its called warped rotors. If you arent very careful about how you brake, its quite common (Coming to a hard stop from high speed and holding the brakes on after you've stopped can contribute to warping, it can create a hot spot on the rotor). The runout spec is .008 I believe.

You can take your bike to a dealer and they can check it. If you're out of spec, they'll replace your rotors. Not uncommon at all.

But if you're at .007, they wont replace them under warranty and your brakes will be quite annoying, so you'd be on the hook to replace them with stock or 3rd party rotors. Most recommended is floating rotors which are not as susceptible to warping.

 

had this happen on our trip to Glacier last year, got bad enough that the windscreen would shake..brought it in when returned home..rotors were within spec so they would not submit warranty claim..however, they did take everything apart, clean it all up, repositioned the rotors to have them mitigate the amount of variance between them and it helped immensely, I'd say ~90% of the pulsating disappears and holds to this day which is has been 10 months..they did this free of charge for me..I'll need a new front tire and brake pads up front this Summer, may just do wheel bearing and put floating rotors on at the same time, start fresh in exchange for spending ~$1000

 

 

probably the acceptable spec for warpage after they started getting reports!

 

Because they probably just increased the "acceptable spec" like they do for everything else. What's the acceptable crank run-out these days?

 

 

Be sure you're actually feeling the pulsing in the lever and it's not just the forks bouncing. On my 06 Night Rod, there was a "slick spot" on the rotors from someone holding the brakes down after a really long down hill while the rotors were still breaking in. Leaving the pads compressed onto a really hot rotor put a glaze on that part of the rotor which caused there to be less friction in that spot. My front end would vibrate at high speeds with heavy braking, and I could literally see the forks bouncing at slow speeds on downhills, but the lever never pulsed.

To fix it I took the rotors off and ran a rotary sander around both sides of both rotors, then went back out to re-bed the brake pads while making sure to not hold the brake down at a stop. This worked.

 

 

My '15 Limited has been like that since day one. No brake lever pulsing, though, just the typical H-D brake pulsing.

The MoCo isn't really capable of consistently producing brake rotors that work and stay in spec (or lots of other things that work as advertised, for that matter). Making a flat disc with some holes drilled in it is clearly beyond their ability to accomplish, so I didn't bother with having more MoCo junk bolted on under warranty.

I'll be going with quality American-Made rotors all around at the first tire change and dumping the MoCo's Chinese crap in the garbage where it should have been in the first place.