Honda ATV Brake Repair

What do you when you've repaired the brakes on a Honda ATV but the brake lever won't build up resistance? Partzilla's ATV pro John Talley was asked this about a Honda Rancher during live Q&A.

John livestreams on our YouTube channel every Friday at 3pm Eastern, and in this edition, he offers up several suggestions to one of our viewers about getting the brake lever to work properly on a Honda ATV.

Honda ATV brake repair

Honda ATV Brake Bleeding

I have replaced the front brake pads, wheel cylinders and master brake cylinder on my 2004 Honda Rancher, bled the brakes and refilled the lines with fresh brake fluid, but I can’t get the brake lever to build up any resistance. Any ideas?

John Talley: Alright, it sounds to me like it’s not even pulling the fluid down. I’ve run into this in the past, I can’t remember the machine because it’s been several years, but I filled up the reservoir trying to bleed it and it wouldn’t do anything. It wouldn’t draw the brake fluid in, until I put the cap on for the reservoir. Now what difference did that make? Apparently a lot to this particular machine. So that may be what you’re running into. Get your cap on or screw it on or twist it on and then see what it does. Put on that top plate. I think it has a rubber diaphragm on the inside of it. Put that on there and see what it does. Now, if you’re still not having any luck, you may want to go ahead and invest in a vacuum bleeder. That’s one of my favorite tools. It makes life really easy. You just open up the bleeder valve down low, attach the vacuum to it and you can either get a manual one or one that you can hook up to an air source and create a vacuum and it’ll pull the fluid down through there.