recall for rear brake drag, rear rotor slightly worped.

[carlray]

My 2012 GL1800 went in for a recall on the brakes, rear brake drag. Dealership fixed the problem as per Honda. Service department said the rear rotor is slightly warped but is within specs and Honda would not replace it. Now I have a slight vibration while riding which I can feel when applying the rear brake, and just cruising down the road. I also have wobble in the front end between 30 and 40 mph. could this slightly warped rotor cause these problems.

[Steve F]

Pulsating brakes...yes. Wobble in the front, not likely, but may be attributed to many suspected things like steering neck bearings, cupped tire, underinflated tire, worn fork bushings, and the list goes on and on. Many have said start with the easy and see what has results. If the tire is worn, start there, and if that doesn't work, move to the next thing that's easy to check and fix. Systematically work your way through it.

[WingAdmin]

My 2012 GL1800 went in for a recall on the brakes, rear brake drag. Dealership fixed the problem as per Honda. Service department said the rear rotor is slightly warped but is within specs and Honda would not replace it. Now I have a slight vibration while riding which I can feel when applying the rear brake, and just cruising down the road. I also have wobble in the front end between 30 and 40 mph. could this slightly warped rotor cause these problems.

A lot of time what people think is "warped rotors" is not - they feel vibration when applying brakes, and assume the rotor is warped.

In most cases, what has happened is that the rotor got extremely hot - either from a hard, emergency stop, or from a brake dragging/locking up on it. The bike (or car!) comes to a stop, and the brake pads are held tightly to the rotor. The hot rotor bakes a bit of brake pad material onto it, and it essentially becomes part of the rotor. Now when you use the brakes, every time that baked on brake pad turns and hits the brake pads, it "grabs" a little bit - causing vibration. The only way to fix this is to have the rotors turned, which skims off a thin layer of metal - but is very difficult to do to motorcycle rotors, which are much harder than car rotors.

You can see when this has happened, just by looking at the rotor:

[carlray]

I bought this bike last year July, had 1650 miles on it. Last February wobble came on hard and fast. Put new tires on and had the brake recall done. The new tires made a big difference. I took it back to the dealer 2weeks ago, according to the dealership the rotor is fine and the bike is road worthy. If the wobble gets worse than what is now I will have the bearings changed in the steering. I road a VTX1800S for ten years, when I got a wobble on it, it was time for new tires.