Mileage: 20875

The front brake on the Tiger 955i is what could be described as ‘adequate’, ie. it’s not very good.  The main problem is that the master cylinder doesn’t seem to have quite the capacity to push enough fluid to the calipers.  The result is that whilst the calipers do work, you can pull the lever pretty much back to the bar.  This doesn’t make for a great braking experience.  I decided to take Adrian Malloy’s advice, and fit a Nissin master cylinder from a Kawasaki ZXR 636.

I got the bits from a breaker’s yard for £45 including the reservoir and a span adjustable lever – so not an expensive job.  Fitting is pretty straight-forward too – it’s basically a bolt off – bolt on job.  I decided to fabricate a different mount for the reservoir that allows me to swing it up behind the mirror – nice and tidy and out of the way.  The only other thing worth mentioning is that depending on which model/year Nissin master cylinder you get, you may need to buy a separate mirror mount.  I did – about £6 from Hein Geriche.

Adrian was dead right.  Front brake action is far better.  You’d need a gorilla-like grip to get the lever back to the bars now – you would break the lever or split the hoses first though!  It not sure that the actual braking force is improved, but it might as well be as feel is way better, and if necessary heavy braking can be achieved easily with two fingers and not much lever travel.  Excellent mod – if you’re reading this and haven’t done it, I highly recommend it.

This entry was posted on Monday, August 2nd, 2010 at 16:29 and is filed under Tiger 955i. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.