What are they like to use?
Fitting a set of new brake lines is a job that, as long as your bike doesn’t have a complicated ABS system, is well within the capabilities of most home mechanics. The trickiest part is routing the lines correctly and ensuring that all of the air is purged from the system. This just takes a bit of time and ideally a vacuum bleeder (these can be found very cheaply online or you can just buy a big syringe from a vet/farm shop and add a bit of tube).
Initial feel
Once fitted, the difference in feel is very noticeable, with the braided steel lines reducing the initial ‘squish’ considerably; so much so I actually had to re-adjust the brake lever’s span to compensate for the new lack of movement.
Pleasingly, the Fazer still retained a small amount of ‘give’, which is probably down to its fairly underpowered master cylinder, something I was a little worried about as I didn’t want that ‘dead’ feeling you get on some sportsbikes with braided lines fitted.
Deceleration test
During the braking test, once the front tyre was up to temperature, the OE rubber lines required quite a strong amount of pressure and a lot of lever movement to achieve maximum braking. It never felt like the bike was lacking in outright braking power; it was just that you had to apply quite a good tug to get the brakes to bite hard and then be aware that the lever’s extended movement was making it come quite close to trapping any fingers left gripping the bars.
In contrast, the braided lines required far less initial movement to get the pads really biting the discs. As a result, you have to be a little more careful when applying the first bit of pressure to deform the front tyre into the ground before you really hit the stoppers, as this extra snap could overwhelm the rubber's grip. However, once loaded up, the pressure and lever’s movement remained far more constant with less lever travel — more energy was going into the brakes rather than just expanding the rubber brake lines.
Results
The difference in dry conditions was only about 70cm but that could make a difference in an emergency situation, especially as it was much easier to modulate the braking power, which would make an ever bigger difference in the wet.
It was also easier to be consistent — during our series of tests, there was just 29cm difference in distances between our best and worst runs, whereas it was a much bigger variation with the original lines.