something that worked for me on my calipers was open the res cap and zip tie the lever closed over night. brakes never felt better after that.

 

Ive always zip tied the clutch handle in. I forgot who said to do that but ive never had issues when ive done it like that.

 

Zip tie-ing the lever won't work at this point. What happened is that the slave cylinder worked its way out when you had the cover off to change the chain. This drained the reservoir and sucked air in. If you have a mity-vac you can bleed the system by pushing fluid UP from the slave. Many people don't realize you can do this with a Mity-vac but you can. You basically fill the cup with fluid and pressurize the cup to push fluid in. Careful you don't pop a line off the setup and get fluid everywhere. Brake fluid and paint don't mix.

If you don't have a mity-vac you can still bleed the clutch the old fashioned way. It takes a while though, since clutch spring pressure is the maximum pressure you'll generate on the system to force fluid out the slave fitting.

 

I dont have a mityvac, I've tried bleeding the lines but the reservoir just wont pull it down. I know cars very well and i am an aviation mechanic for a living but im new to bikes and ive never come across something like this simply because there's massive air in the system. shouldnt it suck down the fluid so it push's air out in the first place? thats how it always worked when i did stuff with my cars.

 

If you've got a large syringe you could try sucking fluid down from the slave but keep the reservoir topped up.

 

So you opened the cap and left the brake down over night? that got the air out? If this is true I will do it tonight

 

Once air gets in the master it's tough to get back out. You just have to keep squeezing that lever over and over, bleed, repeat. But you have to do it fairly quick to get the air to actually move in the line rather than rise back to the top. Try wiggling the clutch lever rapidly before you start to try to get some of that air to come through the reservoir.

 

ya, in theory the air wont be under pressure within the line and be able to rise to the resivoir (sp?) and escape. i do it every time i bleed anything (brakes) and have never had a problem.

 

just bought a mity vac so yeah, ready to try tommorow and see how it works. the most boggling part to me is from my experience cars it should suck down from the reservoir regardless, air trapped or not.

 

It will, but it's easier to go in from the bottom. Just don't overflow the res. It's pretty small. The main issue here is the relatively small force from the clutch springs acting on the system. If it were any brake system it'd be easy.

 

I've heard to not to this... the reason being that brake fluid is sensitive to moisture, and if you leave it in the open it will suck moisture from the air and become less effective. Especially in Florida.

 

brake fluid is very sensitive to moisture. once you open a bottle of brake fluid its bad. however like i said ive never had any problems with this. also im not completely taking the cap off, just unscrew it all the way off and then tight just a tad so its more or less just sitting on top.

 

Even if the brake fluid is actually doing just that, it takes a lot more than 24 hours for it to be a problem...