NMdesertracer
New member
Installed a Bullet Brake today fairly easy job. Now the front brake can be locked while parked.
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Bullet brake!
- Thread starter NMdesertracer
- Start date
wspollack
Well-known member
Interesting concept.
I had never heard of them, but found them easily enough. For those interested:
- Web site: https://www.bulletbrake.com/
- YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@bulletbrake/videos
Some questions for you:
1) Did you buy, as the web site claims for all BMWs, the BB-01 model?
2) Did little or no brake fluid come out, as their installation video shows? (I was surprised that only a drop or two came out, in their video. Then again, I've never taken a banjo bolt out, myself.)
3) Any reason you picked the front brake lever to do this on (if I understand the pics correctly), as opposed to the rear brake? (I think I would've chosen the rear brake, with more of the weight of the engine on it. And on those rare occasions when I use my brake-clip plastic parking-lock gizmo, I put it on the rear brake lever.) Edit: Plus, I would be reluctant to mess with the all-important front brakes, in any case.
4) Any difficulty, issues, etc., finding the proper spot to drill through the handlebar cover? And what size bit did you use?
5) Have you had time to leave this activated for a day or more, to see whether it loses its lock capability -- slides back out -- after some period of time?
Mostly just curious about this, and thanks for your time, and for the pics.
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NMdesertracer
New member
Yes its the BB-01 use discount code "SENSEI15" to get it to $101 saving $18. I put it on the front if the bike was on the center stand. Some fluid will come out not much just have the BB with one seal on it ready to go. No need to crank down on it its aluminum the BB seals are top notch! I took off the windscreen to give me more room. Make sure you cover the plastics and LCD with a something to not let the brake fluid come in contact. After I got the BB on and tightened I took off the front brakes cover and slowly "SLOWLY" lol pump the brake on the center stand and turn the handlebars to the left high point of the master cylinder. Getting every bubble out let it sit for 5 minutes work the BB and get more bubbles out till its firm like stock. To drill the hole i took off the BMW center and right hand lower. Then put the top on and with a flashlight use a perm marker where the BB is near the plastic. Drill a small hole and used a dremel to get it centered then used a drill with a step up bit that looks like a xmas tree lol. Apply a little front brake then push the BB in. to release just pull in the front bake lever. I have one on my 24' HONDA Africa Twin DCT stays locked and Honda Goldwing owners swear by it with the DCT transmission. Made in the USA folks!
wspollack
Well-known member
Thanks very much for that detailed explanation. (And for the discount code, should anyone else pursue this mod.)
What you said about the center stand makes sense -- I hadn't thought of that, vis-a-vis the front wheel's brake -- but I don't think I've ever used the center stand when circumstances required that I park on a hill, i.e., when a parking brake might be needed. If I ever decide to do this, I'd still go for the rear brake. Ah, well, different strokes and all that.
BTW, I'm quite familiar with stepper bits -- I think I have five of them, and even used them in a three of places on my C 400 GT (external USB port, garage-door-opener button, and external Powerlet socket). From my gallery: https://billanddot.com/C400GT/#S-20
Another aside. Once a year or so, typically over the winter, I take a bungee cord, and wrap it very tightly around a brake lever and the corresponding hand grip. I leave it that way for a few days, and it does wonders for getting rid of slop in the brakes, firms a sloppy lever right up. This is the same sort of thing you accomplished, only on a longer scale; apparently, it helps get rid of air in the system, just sitting that way, i.e., with the lever pulled tight.
Thanks for your time, too.
mzflorida
Well-known member
Great mod and the first I've heard of this. Thanks for sharing!
Ceesie76
Well-known member
Bit puzzled why this is useful. My C650 Sport of course has a parking brake, when it's on the side stand, and to me that's more a nuisance than a benefit.
wspollack
Well-known member
Every once in a while -- maybe once a year, maybe once every other year -- I wind up in a situation that seems to require parking a scooter on an incline (as opposed to, say, parking it far away, maybe out of sight of a restaurant window, etc.).
For those situations, a parking brake on a scooter (or electric bike) seems to make sense to me, because you can't leave it in first gear, the way you can with a regular motorcycle.
I had two Burgman 650s for a total of 11 years, and they had a separate pull-lever parking brake (kind of reminiscent of the hand levers you used to find on stick-shift cars). They engaged a separate cable to the rear-brake caliper.
And some scooters, like your C650, have parking brakes automatically deployed with the side stand. By the way, I don't follow you, i.e., why you considered it a nuisance. It didn't require any special thinking or action on your part, right? Did it fail a lot, or something like that?
The C 400 scooters, by contrast, have no parking brake.
Personally, I went this route:
That is, when I first got my '22 C 400 GT, I bought the cheap gizmo on the left, on AliExpress. Although the description stated that it was made for the C 400, it didn't work well at all, given the sort of raised, curved, area by the brake lever mounts. And I even drilled out its bracket, to try to make it fit better. This is designed, theoretically, to hold a closed brake lever in place, but just didn't work. And if I tightened things up enough to make it work, that interfered with the free play of the lever.
So I went with plan B, on the right in that picture. I keep it in the left cubby, and reach in there for those extremely rare occasions when I need a brake lock, squeeze it around the rear brake lever, and that's that. (And hope no passerby messes with the scoot.)
I bought that one from Wunderlich USA: https://www.wunderlichamerica.com/BMW-Motorcycle-BrakeFix . Cheap enough, and does the job for me.
I'd go with the more elegant Bullet Brake system that @NMdesertracer posted about here ... if I could remember the last time I needed to use my BrakeFix thingy. I mean, I think I went at least two years now without needing it.
OTOH, if I lived in San Francisco or some other hilly place, maybe I would encounter more situations that would be suitable for a parking brake when stopping for lunch or something. I did, after all, just spend a lot of money on adding an internal TPMS to my C 400, so I'm not averse to elegant solutions; however, that's something I use every ride.
Reguam
Member
After seeing your post I decided to try this out but have not received yet. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07ZK2YK91?ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_fed_asin_title&th=1 I park in a garage, and typically avoid hills which can be inconvenient but when staying at hotels I have my fingers crossed it will still be there in the morning. Thanks for the post.
mzflorida
Well-known member
Bill, can you tell me more or direct me to the post please?
wspollack
Well-known member
Sure. You're talking about TPMS, right?
If so, sorry, my answer got mixed in with a "2025 TPMS" thread, even though I have a '23. Here's the link to my successful result, mixed into a very long thread. Start with this particular post, and read forward or backward after that, if you like: https://www.bmw-scooters.com/threads/2025-tpms.3557/post-30463
Ceesie76
Well-known member
The reasons I don't like my Sport having the automatic rear parking brake tied to the sidestand are that, (1) it does not allow me to put it on the center stand without first retracting the side stand, and (2) I can't move the bike around the garage just by straightening it from the side stand - I have to again retract the side stand before I can move it at all. So, since I don't perceive any benefit from having it, but do experience disadvantages, that's why I don't like it.
THAT SAID, because I can't stand things not being as they were designed, I have not disabled it (which would be easy to do) ...
THAT SAID, because I can't stand things not being as they were designed, I have not disabled it (which would be easy to do) ...
wspollack
Well-known member
Ah, you make some excellent points.
When I park in my garage, I always put the sidestand down, and then, with the sidestand still deployed, I raise it on the centerstand. And then I fold up the sidestand up (because I don't want to confuse the situation the next time I get on the bike, and lunge forward to get it off the centerstand).
And I do sometimes, when the bike's on the sidestand, just tip the bike a bit, to roll it a bit more forward or backward (for instance, if I get off right after pulling into the garage and -- before putting it on the centerstand -- realize that I rode into the garage too far or not far enough.
So, yep, now that you've pointed this out to me, I would be annoyed, too, with that automatic system.
I guess the now-defunct Burgman 650 had a better system, what with its completely separate system, which required you to activate it and deactivate it, just like a lever in a car.
SamKool
Member
which i do, and either of these will definitely come in handy.
wspollack
Well-known member
Personally, I would separate the two functions.
That is, if you want something to function as a parking brake, and have it be a little slicker and a little easier to put on than a bungee cord, I would:
- Do what @NMdesertracer did, i.e., install the elegant and ultra-convenient Bullet Brake, or:
- Do what I did, and buy the cheap plastic, pretty easy to use, BrakeFix.
And if you want a theft deterrent, i.e., you want to make it more difficult for someone to steal the bike, then also get a decent lock.
- As I noted in my gallery (https://billanddot.com/C400GT/#S-148 ), I bought an Oxford Boss for my very occasional overnight motel stays.
That has a very good security rating from a UK rating outfit, and LockPickingLawyer, et al., say that it is unlikely to be picked in the wild.
That combo brake/lock device that @Reguam cited earlier got some pretty bad reviews, in terms of quality and security.
Physical attacks are much more likely than picking, of course, and in that respect the Oxford model I bought is a compromise between money and toughness. Speaking of which, LPL and others have shown that the kind of locks that have a slot for a brake disc, such that they slide over the disc, are defeated with some quick and easy physical attacks.
And if you want to give the folks with battery-operated angle grinders real pause, or reason to move on, and you can spare, say, $300, you might want to go with OnGuard RockSolid (https://www.onguardlock.com/product/rocksolid-8590/ ). And if you can spare even more, you might want to go with the LiteLok X3 (https://us.litelok.com/products/litelok-x3-moto ) or the HIPLOCK DX1000 (https://hiplok.com/product/hiplok-dx1000/ ).
Mind you, a gang of burly guys can almost always just lift a bike into a waiting van, but if you want to eliminate one or two professionals with angle grinders, those seem to be the best bets, based on my research. (I have the OnGuard on my Amazon wish list, if anyone wants to give me a present.)
But my real point here is to separate the functions: you want a parking brake, get an easy-to-use device for that; you want a lock, get a decent one. That's my position, anyway (and no one pays attention to alarm noise anymore, right, so I wouldn't add that feature to any lock I'd buy).
That is, if you want something to function as a parking brake, and have it be a little slicker and a little easier to put on than a bungee cord, I would:
- Do what @NMdesertracer did, i.e., install the elegant and ultra-convenient Bullet Brake, or:
- Do what I did, and buy the cheap plastic, pretty easy to use, BrakeFix.
And if you want a theft deterrent, i.e., you want to make it more difficult for someone to steal the bike, then also get a decent lock.
- As I noted in my gallery (https://billanddot.com/C400GT/#S-148 ), I bought an Oxford Boss for my very occasional overnight motel stays.
That has a very good security rating from a UK rating outfit, and LockPickingLawyer, et al., say that it is unlikely to be picked in the wild.
That combo brake/lock device that @Reguam cited earlier got some pretty bad reviews, in terms of quality and security.
Physical attacks are much more likely than picking, of course, and in that respect the Oxford model I bought is a compromise between money and toughness. Speaking of which, LPL and others have shown that the kind of locks that have a slot for a brake disc, such that they slide over the disc, are defeated with some quick and easy physical attacks.
And if you want to give the folks with battery-operated angle grinders real pause, or reason to move on, and you can spare, say, $300, you might want to go with OnGuard RockSolid (https://www.onguardlock.com/product/rocksolid-8590/ ). And if you can spare even more, you might want to go with the LiteLok X3 (https://us.litelok.com/products/litelok-x3-moto ) or the HIPLOCK DX1000 (https://hiplok.com/product/hiplok-dx1000/ ).
Mind you, a gang of burly guys can almost always just lift a bike into a waiting van, but if you want to eliminate one or two professionals with angle grinders, those seem to be the best bets, based on my research. (I have the OnGuard on my Amazon wish list, if anyone wants to give me a present.)
But my real point here is to separate the functions: you want a parking brake, get an easy-to-use device for that; you want a lock, get a decent one. That's my position, anyway (and no one pays attention to alarm noise anymore, right, so I wouldn't add that feature to any lock I'd buy).