danger stock on road

Was cracking the three mile a couple of days ago during a brief respite from shitty spring weather and had a wee heart stopper
Into the third left hand corner going up the hill noticed that the rear brake felt a little spoungy, then again slowing down into the next tight left / immeadiately into a tighter right I again thought “That brake is definately spoungy I’ll stop and check it” [at the top of the hill of course]
So out of the easy left [a kilometer further up the hill] and onto the 400mtr straight and another easy left cracking ’bout 150kmph and what d’ya know – road works and the pointsman with the stop sign so its on with the picks but alas the rear brake was non existant
the reason it had been feeling a little spoungy was that the pivot bolt had started to come undone and by the time I reached the road works it had completely come adrift and the brake lever was hangin by its return spring and all I had was the front brakes
Believe it or not the front brake on a bike is the most important one so it wasn’t a full on panic and because I’d noticed it getting “soft” I wasn’t caught completely by surprise
But 150kmph to zero in 200mtr is a lot of stopping on the front brake
So I have had to do my first stint of running repairs on my Moto Guzzi
I got a long bolt from work and cut the tip off of a nylex hose connector shaped it down to act as the pivot bush, then put a stainless steel dome nut over the protruding thread of the bolt [nice tidy look]
Years of practice at running repairs ment I only had the rear brake issue for about two hours, and the bush that i fabricated is doing such a great job I may just call it “sorted’ as oppossed to a “get you along until the proper part arrives” fix
Why is it that motorcycles have vibration issues? and are constantly in need of having their nuts checked?
Dont get me wrong i like to get my nuts checked as much as the next guy but come on its new machine i shouldn’t have to check its nuts yet
Still not harm done and i’m sure I’ll be able to get the stains out of my pants with nappy san [haha]
Again it brings home the good tyres argument, good rubber means good braking, and the long stroke of the V-twin means you have awesome engine braking again transfered to the road through the tyre
We had another major dumping of snow on the southern alps two days ago and the temperature dropped off accordingly so its a wee reminder that winter is not fully over yet
Danger [frozen] Stock on Road