HarborBandS

I am a former 1990s shop mechanic, and have successfully built up countless bikes over the past decades. But my current build was my first with hydraulic disc brakes.

I watched several YouTube videos to prepare for some new hydraulics experience, and felt pretty confident going in.

My Shimano ST-R8020 levers came without hoses attached. But the calipers were pre-attached to the hoses.

A couple of days ago I shortened the front brake hose, installed a new barb, put an olive on the end, and tried to tighten the fixing bolt to the shift lever. But I just had a ton of trouble getting the bolt started. Eventually I got a cross threaded angle going, and totally stripped the threads in the lever body, thereby trashing an expensive bicycle part. Arrgghhh!!!! Seriously?!?

So today I was determined to not make the same mistake on the other lever. I did the same steps of inserting the barb, threading the olive on to the end of the hose, and very carefully got the fixing bolt started by hand. I tightened it down slowly, never really feeling like it was a lot of torque (I don’t have a torque spanner wrench—just a socket type), and suddenly I heard a sharp, snapping sound. I knew it couldn’t be good. And there it was... a crack through the shifter body from over tightening! Crazy!

I was a bit despondent at this point. This step looked so easy on YouTube... If GP Llama could do it, I could certainly handle the task. How could I have botched these two bolts so badly?

Then I saw it... remnants of TWO olives in the hose attachment point. The shift levers had come with olives already inside them! So of course it was hard to thread the fixing bolt on the first shifter. And the pressure from two olives crushed in that space cracked a shifter.

And now I’m a deeply frustrated idiot out several hundred dollars. Always check for a pre-installed olive in your new shift levers, even if there is no hose attached. Don’t be like me.