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Looking back through the notes I keep on all the maintenance on my Monster, I note that the highest maintenance item has been the rear brake.
I had persistent problems. Warped disc, high pad wear, wear in the torque rod rose joints, dragging when wheeling the bike around and weirdly a problem discovered at MOT time, where the back wheel could not be rotated backwards. This seemed to be due to the pads wearing to a wedge shape and behaving a bit like a sprag clutch.
Now the rolling road brake test had always showed that the brake was slow to pull off after application, but inspection showed that the pistons were nice and free for their full travel. Fluid flowed into the res' when they were pushed back and the master appeared to work properly.
However the only thing that transformed the operation to a healthy normal was to replace the master cylinder complete.
I think the seals get gradually more draggy or maybe the return spring gets lazy? Nothing you can put your finger on, but replacing the master was the answer after many false trails.
… And yes I fell foul of the old free play thing many years ago on the very first ride out.
I adjusted virtually all the free play out to get a nice crisp lever action, but soon had the brake bind on solid.
I now make sure there is at least 2mm clearance on the stop, which is a lot of free play at the foot end of the lever.
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