brake upgrades for '79GS850

[SkeletonLake]

What experience do any of you have upgrading the brakes on the GSs? The brakes on mine are getting iffy and beyond new stainless lines, will master cylinders and calipers from newer Suzukis fit and work? Have put in new pads and changed fluid...Mama has an '05 vStrom and after riding it my brakes feel outdated.

[tfb]

Well there's 27 years age difference between the motorcycles, so using the V-Strom as a benchmark is being more than a little unfair to your 70's beastie!

That said, there are a few basic things you can do to improve your brakes:
1. Fully dismantle and clean out your calipers, hoses and master cylinder.
2. Carefully re-dress the caliper pistons with very fine emery paper.
3. Pump fresh brake fluid into the system and take care to remove all air bubbles. (Symptom of air in the system: when you repeatedly operate the brake lever, it gets firmer.)
4. Braided lines.
5. Later model master cylinder. I use a Kawasaki GPz900 item on my Katana 1100, and it works a treat. Much better brakelight switch setup, too.

Stopping power is also a function of suspension setup, so that's another thing worth considering in the overall picture.

[koolaid_kid]

I tend to agree with tfb. Make your brakes the best they can be by restoring them to the original quality. The front wheel appears to be upgradeable to dual discs (it is single right now, correct?). That would give you the greatest improvement, IMO.

[SkeletonLake]

Thanks for the replies so far; I've replaced the seals in the calipers, given it all a thorough cleaning with clean brake fluid etc, new lines, thoroughly bled the lines. With the system being so old of course the master cylinder needs attention also but this is the problem(sorry for not being more specific to begin). New master cylinders are NLA and the dealer advises there isn't really a rebuild kit, just parts listed on the screen. This leads me to think a better idea is to try and upgrade to newer hardware.

[koolaid_kid]

I agree. I worked with a friend on his 79 850G. We were unable to find anything for the master cylinder (m/c).
Putting on a different ("upgraded") m/c should not affect the calipers, as long as the flow (volume) is close. All the m/c does is supply fluid to the calipers, they don't care what model of m/c is supplying the fluid.

[mark]

Just for your info. the slotted disks that came out on later 850 models will fit your '79 as well.

[SqDancerLynn1]

All of the GS850s were dual disk, stainless lines is a major improvement