Ask the experts

[jono]

Moved from SRAM to Shimano to now Magura. All different flavors of struggle

Simple pretty much nails the cause, but having accepted toast's door number 3 I've finally figured one thing out: Magura (MT4/MT5) needs more volume in reserve. This can be addressed by adding a few drops of fluid periodically as the pads wear. Annoying, but not too bad if you remember not to go tight on the bleed screw.

[Dantheman]

I think he needs to ask himself 5 questions:
1) do I want a brake that has a history of failure that might be fixed (or maybe not), or
2) do I want a brake that has a 60% chance of occasionally, and without warning, pulling all the way to the bar, or
3) do I want a brake with bleed fittings that'll strip out and with pads that aren't super common, or
4) do I want brakes that are unproven and are built by a company that seems to be perpetually on the verge of bankruptcy, or
5) do I want to spend way more money on something that's fancy and may or may not work well, but no one really knows because only like 17 people on the planet actually own them?

Pick your poison.

1 and 2 is obviously SRAM and Shimano, and I seem to recall the bleed port issue Magura. 4 is...Hayes? Hope? TRP? 5 is...Trickstuff?

[LeeLau]

4 is Hayes. They are nice.

Re Magura. Don't gorilla the bleed port. And keep stock of pads.

[toast2266]

1 and 2 is obviously SRAM and Shimano, and I seem to recall the bleed port issue Magura. 4 is...Hayes? Hope? TRP? 5 is...Trickstuff?

Yeah, 4 is Hayes. 5 I was thinking of Trickstuff, although it could probably apply to others. I think HAB covered Hope. Kinda forgot about TRP, but I'm sure there's something wrong with them (pads hard to find, etc.).

[Roxtar]

All this brake talk has me pondering the old question...

Why do mountain bike brakes suck?


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Current brakes suck?!
You're obviously a lot younger than many of us.
You didn't ride mountain bikes with canti-brakes.
After living with cantis, we fell in love with vee-brakes.
After living with vees, we loved cable discs.
After living with cable discs, we loved the first gen hydro discs.
After living with the first gen hydro discs, we loved the better, 2nd gen, hydro discs.
And now?...
Current disc brakes are amazing. Take XTs, for instance; reliable, cheap, blind monkey easy to bleed, and will stop a train.
You have no idea how good you have it.

[wendigo]

^^^^ truth

[jm2e]

Nail on head. For fucks sake, even Shimano Deore bakes work shockingly well. Better than anything available 10 years ago.


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[HAB]

Yeah, 4 is Hayes. 5 I was thinking of Trickstuff, although it could probably apply to others. I think HAB covered Hope. Kinda forgot about TRP, but I'm sure there's something wrong with them (pads hard to find, etc.).

TRP was smart enough to just use Shimano pads, so there's that.


I'm not quite old enough to have done much mountain biking on cantis, but was around for v brakes. Yes, brakes now are vastly better than they used to be, but I 100% agree with Toast that most stuff out there has some significant downside still. Just because things are better than they once were doesn't mean that there isn't still a ton of room for improvement.

[toast2266]

TRP was smart enough to just use Shimano pads, so there's that.

Ah, right. I forgot about that.

I guess that settles it. TRP wins.

At least until they sell a million units and it turns out they have inherent problems that just passed by unnoticed when they were only moving (relatively) tiny volumes of product.

[nickwm21]

Current brakes suck?!
You're obviously a lot younger than many of us.
You didn't ride mountain bikes with canti-brakes.
After living with cantis, we fell in love with vee-brakes.
After living with vees, we loved cable discs.
After living with cable discs, we loved the first gen hydro discs.
After living with the first gen hydro discs, we loved the better, 2nd gen, hydro discs.
And now?...
Current disc brakes are amazing. Take XTs, for instance; reliable, cheap, blind monkey easy to bleed, and will stop a train.
You have no idea how good you have it.

I started riding in the cable disc era... so sure you have a point... hydro disc brakes are amazing when they are working solid.. but you know what always worked, my old cable discs on my $500 Kona Cindercone...


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[El Chupacabra]

Current brakes suck?!
You're obviously a lot younger than many of us.
You didn't ride mountain bikes with canti-brakes.
After living with cantis, we fell in love with vee-brakes.
After living with vees, we loved cable discs.
After living with cable discs, we loved the first gen hydro discs.
After living with the first gen hydro discs, we loved the better, 2nd gen, hydro discs.
And now?...
Current disc brakes are amazing. Take XTs, for instance; reliable, cheap, blind monkey easy to bleed, and will stop a train.
You have no idea how good you have it.

This.

Some of that old stuff was truly terrible and a PITA to work on. U-brakes under the chain stays.... Canti cable hangers that were integrated into quill stems... roller brakes...

[simple]

Sorry but XT brakes are not "amazing"

They are cheap and break easily. Strong feeling sure but not amazing. Respect to the old heads (I am one) but it is just an above average brake for average riders.

[XXX-er]

I think everyone might have a different tak, the oldest stlyle brakes sucked, canti were better, u brake under the bottm bracket was a dumb spot but worked ok, V brakes were pretty good, hayes hydros broke lots, BB7's were just as powerful as hayes but no modulation but also no breakdowns, juicy meh and lately the shimano seem awesume

[toast2266]

Sorry but XT brakes are not "amazing"

They are cheap and break easily. Strong feeling sure but not amazing. Respect to the old heads (I am one) but it is just an above average brake for average riders.

Yup.

Since the canti era, most of the brakes I've been on were decent for their time. But they all had problems. The current crop of brakes are the best yet, but particularly in the "trail" category, there's still a lot of room for improvement. There is no option currently on the market that is clearly superior.

[Dee Hubbs]

Sorry but XT brakes are not "amazing"
They are cheap and break easily. Strong feeling sure but not amazing. Respect to the old heads (I am one) but it is just an above average brake for average riders.

Pretty hard to group all "XT" brakes in the same boat. Which ones are the cheap ones that break easily:
XT 8120 ?
XT 8100 ?
XT 8020 ?
XT 8000 ?
XT 785 ?
Or do we need to go back to before 2011?

[toast2266]

Pretty hard to group all "XT" brakes in the same boat. Which ones are the cheap ones that break easily:
XT 8120 ?
XT 8100 ?
XT 8020 ?
XT 8000 ?
XT 785 ?
Or do we need to go back to before 2011?

Pretty sure he was talking about the '96 v-brakes.

Edit: I also think it's funny how militant the defenders of XT brakes are, despite those things having well documented, significant problems.

[El Chupacabra]

I will accept all XT hydraulic brakes that are unwanted, and give them a good home.

[Roxtar]

Sorry but XT brakes are not "amazing"

They are cheap and break easily. Strong feeling sure but not amazing. Respect to the old heads (I am one) but it is just an above average brake for average riders.

What exactly breaks so easily on XTs?
I owned a shop for 5 years and the amount of XT brake issues could fit on one hand with several fingers left. Can't say that about lots of others mentioned here.
Perfect? No.
Neither is a Toyota Tacoma but it's still a pretty damn good truck.

[simple]

Well yeah it isn't like an Elixer or Guide with massive warranty returns.

You may not have seen many because they are so cheap to replace and Shimano warranty is no where near as easy as SRAM.

I had constant issues with roasted pistons and the lever seals leaking. Nothing a bleed could fix. Always had to throw them away. Nice to be able to buy individual levers and calipers I guess.

[jm2e]

To clarify, modern brakes are like modern tubeless systems. Pretty damn awesome if you started riding more than 5 years ago. Vastly better performing and more reliable than their predecessors.
Sometimes challenging. Usually not. Room for improvement? Sure, but we’re talking about gaining small fractions of progression.
Unfortunately, like with dropper posts, the industry thinks we want something just a little “better” when we really want something more reliable.


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[simple]

The bike industry doesn't want reliable. They want you to buy new shit constantly if you love the sport.

Engineered to last only if you use it lightly. Once you ride the shit out of them bicycles and their parts wear and break.


So yeah you could be on a bike from 1996 still. You are a casual user and likely can't ride like you did in 1996 anymore. All good.

[Canada1]

I am trying to find an xt 9 speed rt shifter and striking out. Antony know if a sram index shifter is compatible? Seems like all of the 9 speed shifters are I back order. Is this a covid thing, or just the bike is too old thing?

Thanks

[HAB]

Sram 9 speed won't work, unless you can find the non-series version that is designed to work with Shimano. Those were called Attack or something like that.

There are some low end Shimano 9 speed shifters still being made but looking for XT level is a "your bike is too old" thing.

[Dantheman]

Yeah, 4 is Hayes.

n=1 and you're well aware of my biases, but I totaled up my Strava stats from last year and it looks like I did about 60,000 feet of descending between the time I installed my Dominions in July and when I scrambled my brain in late October. No fade, no squeal, no wandering bite, no need for a bleed, nada. That was all on one set of semi-metallic pads that still had some life left (I weigh about 165 geared up), though I replaced them this spring with a set of the sintered pads anyway (that I already had because the brakes come with both sets). The flippable levers are also a nice touch.

There's a big thread on MTBR where people do report some problems. The most commonly reported problem, which isn't all that common, is sticky pistons not retracting fully. Some piston exercising seems to fix it, and it's easy to do with their bleed block. Hayes going out of business seems unlikely: https://hayesperformance.com/markets/

[toast2266]

^^^ yeah, I'm hearing a lot of good things about the new hayes stuff. Definitely curious to try them.

And yeah, in fairness, they probably won't go bankrupt. They could pull out of the bicycle game though (which they've done in the past).