we’re gonna focus on And I’ll tell you the whole story, how I came across this. It actually failed, poorly engineered What is this thing, an MZS Motorcycle lever. Okay, this is a brake lever that Almost caused this customer of ours to fall. So long story. I’m gonna tell the full story But the first thing I want to say is this There’s a couple of things on this motorcycle That if they let you down, if they fail, if they’re a poor quality or poor design and there’s an issue with it You could have a really big problem. It’s so obvious. I mean the brake lever, okay Whether you’re on the track or on the street? When you go to throw those fingers over that lever that thing needs to be there. If it’s not You’re gonna have a really bad day. I happen to know of just two Circumstances, people I know, friends. That on track had lever failure, total level failure actually And both resulted in very serious accidents and big-time injuries that they are carrying along with them for the rest of their lives You can’t lose that. Another thing that’s super important. You’ve seen we’ve done some throttle installs lately to The throttle The brake lever, the throttles, they have to be perfect. Your controls have to be strong and have integrity So they withstand all the forces that can be applied to them You know you can’t have a clip on just snap off in your hand under heavy braking You’re gonna have a bad day almost as bad as if you lost the brake lever Rear sets too. You’re putting all the weight on those foot pegs. You need to know those things are gonna hold up and that takes Quality materials, quality engineering, right and Quality production and machining to get all that done Little disclaimer here everything that I’m gonna show you here, this is real-world stuff everyday. This is my opinion I’m not out to attack anybody. I’m sure the people at MZS, wherever they’re from. Looks like China or something I love Chinese people. I love everybody This isn’t an attack on anyone This is just simply sharing something with everybody out there that we learned and one of our customers learned damn near the hard way How this whole thing came about is we have a good customer that he had purchased a set of Spiegeler brake lines for his 2017 Yamaha R6. He watched my kick-ass install video. He installed him on his bike, he did a great job And then I saw cuz I answer all the YouTube comments myself I saw a comment on there.

It was a Friday afternoon. We’re actually about to go home Talking about: Help, I installed these lines something’s not right. My brakes are locking up The minute I saw that I was able to take his username. He hadn’t even reached out to us. Okay, he put the comment on YouTube I took his username I did a little research on the site, in our software and I was able to find him and I sent him an email and called him immediately because You cannot have your brakes locking up and I wanted to make sure there was a problem with the line kit or something Right, that we were there to support him I’ll say that Spiegler was all over this too. The owner’s of Spiegler And I worked with this customer to get his issue sorted out and essentially we were helping him diagnose it I’ll say this guy’s super patient super cool I really loved how he just worked with us through this process because it turned out it had nothing to do with the brake lines We asked a series of questions And to help figure out what was wrong. And one of the questions we asked was have you installed any aftermarket Levers on your bike, specifically a brake lever. Well, it turned out he had You can find on Amazon or Ebay Okay, these these MZS levers, you know, and they’ve got some really good looking product pictures right There’s some funny broken English typed in the product descriptions, too I mean that stuff’s a hoot. Just go take a look at it, but I’ll be open and honest with you $35 or $40 for a set for these things for two levers That’s a hell of a deal and I know we all love saving money. I love saving money. Okay, but let’s show What happened in this particular case. We’re going to focus on this brake lever now By design on that 2017 R6, like say for example my GSX-R1000. It uses the same style lever. Okay in here There is a cross pin bushing, okay. And I have a drill bit in that right now and this thing should float back and forth I’m going to show you that here’s an OE lever And you can see I mean, hopefully Steve’s getting in there really tight. But I mean that thing is just loosey goose in there It can’t bind up at all I’m going to show you a CRG lever These are made here in the US and there’s a lot of great stuff made in China for sure. These levers probably are not one of them okay Here is the cross pin bushing. It comes not installed yet in the lever CRG knows this is so important These dudes actually have a whole little set of instructions just to talk about this bushing because I’ll tell you right now You mess this bushing up while we’ve already talked about what’s going to happen So notice that tolerance, okay. It’s not sloppy but it’s not real tight. You also need to lubricate that when you put in here And you can see that floats back and forth with zero resistance. yamaha r6 fairings If that’s binding What’s gonna happen is, as you’re pulling that The Truth About Cheap Motorcycle Levers Sportbike Track Gearlever in and releasing it Okay with the master that thing actually needs to rotate just a tiny little bit.

If it can’t rotate It is going to bind the brake pistons. What was happening to our customer is he literally took it for a short test drive Applies the brakes. This thing’s not moving and the brakes just hang up on him Fortunately, he did not crash. You’re talking about a 2017 R6, that’s a badass bike What is it twelve thousand, thirteen thousand dollars. Could have flicked it on the ground could have gotten a big accident all that stuff Absolutely could have happened. So, you know, here’s issue one With these levers and in my opinion. That is an unbelievable flood like it push a little harder That’s what it took and it’s still bound up. That has to float Completely free, it didn’t, you can see they’ve got it retained here, you know with that snap ring in there The tolerance is too tight inside Bottom line is Not a great design I did a little research on the company. Like I said, I’m sure they’re fantastic. People are probably just wonderful. Very nice people Not trying to bag on them, I’m just trying to show you what we learned here because this price can be really tempting You know, it looks like Overseas production which is okay. A lot of great stuff is made there and they’re selling direct on Amazon and or eBay Okay, so you just buy the levers in a set? One thing I would question do they have product liability insurance, you know You manufacture and sell stuff here, right you put products like this on a bike And if you have an issue, right a faulty part and somebody crashes, falls down and hurts themselves You need to have those things in place , r1 fairings, I don’t know if a company selling levers for $35 a set has that in place and that’s a really important thing Okay now, let’s just continue forward. Let’s focus on the rest of the lever We showed you right, that cross pin and how that is just not great. But you know, even let’s talk tolerances And hopefully the camera gets this like there’s a lot of play in there, okay Let’s look at the clicker here the adjuster you can see that I mean that’s a pretty solid amount of play in there as well The actual Adjusting ramp See, right there where the red meets the black They’ve just got a machined surface there. So it’s metal-on-metal. Okay, that’s one way to do it for sure Now let’s just, we’ll show you the CRG the RC2 lever and this is a higher end lever so it should be a lot better, right? Very nice tight tolerance the clicker Well, that’s tight tolerance too just as it should be The adjuster I’m sure you can see the writing there moving that’s a bearing that that rotates out. So this is a very smooth action super high-quality This is a lever and this is $80-$90 lever. I mean it’s more than this whole set. It should be kick-ass right? Well CRG offers another line within their brand. These are the spectrum levers. We have them on the site They’re $64 a piece so you can get a set of these for about $130. That’s pretty darn affordable, okay Yeah, it’s more than that for sure. But at the end of the day you’re getting 10 times the lever So let’s take a look at this little Spectrum lever okay. you can see the quality machining Super awesome. motorcycle fairings They’re building off all the same measurements. They do their higher end levers Super smooth clicker You can see the tolerance. It’s the same as it was with that RC2 lever. Pretty sweet Show you the clicker. All right, that’s not wiggling all over the place and it’s using that same bearing in there For the adjusters a super smooth action, so there are more affordable options, right? If you don’t want to go with the high-end RC2 that replacement ends and all that stuff different bells and whistles, you know They have something a little more affordable here with a spectrum some color options Great product from a great company. Solid engineering, high quality materials are used. Years and years of experience Have gone in to that product Okay, so this is pretty short and pretty sweet but it’s really really important. Once again not trying to talk poorly about anybody I’m sure these people over here are just super nice people, right? They’re operating only on Amazon and eBay looks like they’re selling direct, you know, are they developing these products themselves? I can’t answer that do they have product liability insurance here. I have no idea how to answer that Would I ride with these on my bike? Well, I can answer that That’s a hell. No, right I love saving money man. But there’s no way I would put those on my motorcycle Brake lever, clip-ons, rear sets There’s just some things with the bike that you just cannot take a chance on you need to stick to a good quality Name-brand that’s invested in the sport in the industry and in developing high quality Products and they’re here to stand behind them and even as a retailer we’re here to work with you have issues through that too So there you go, man Aftermarket motorcycle lever 101 i’m Brian Van. Wearing a tight shirt over here at Sportbike Track Gear