cyccommute 

Don’t think so. First, not all modern brakes are Shimano. Second, with regard to the implying that mechanicals are death traps, elcruxio did bring up the nightmare scenario of frozen brakes. If that isn’t fear mongering, I don’t know what is.

The rest of the post was him trying to convince us that somehow cables are difficult to work on compared to hydraulics. Utter hogwash!

Eric F 

Hmmm...I've had my newest MTB (XTR hydro brakes) for 7 months, and I bought it used. I have zero idea when or if the previous owner ever bled the brakes since the time he replaced the stock SRAM brakes with XTR. Based on his poor maintenance on everything else, I suspect never. I have yet to come across any reason why the brakes would need to be bled.

Am I doing it wrong?

tomato coupe

He did not refer to frozen brakes as a "nightmare scenario" -- that's all on you. In fact, he called you out on it.

Eric F 

I haven't seen that. Do you have any specific examples? Mostly, I see the anti-hydro folks complaining/campaigning that disc brakes are too complex, too heavy, too dangerous, or in some other way a waste of time, money, and/or effort. In response, hydro disc users generally respond with personal experiences related to why some/all of those things aren't true or aren't actually significant. Many hydro disc users (including myself) have multiple bikes with multiple types of brake systems, and acknowledge that non-hydro brakes (disc or rim) work adequately in most situations.

smd4

You forgot ugly and inelegant.

elcruxio

Corroded cables are just a matter of time and conditions. In harsher conditions and daily riding cables corrode more easily. Or get grimy.


Where did I state that exactly. I think that's all in your head, but do go find quote where I post that mechanical brakes fail at the slightest cold.

sigh...

So typically you'd do a bubble bleed when you shorten a hose or do some other minor adjustment that may have introduced air by opening the closed system.

You're not doing yourself any favors here...

mineral oil brands
Shimano
campagnolo
Magura
Tektro
Trp
Clarks
Promax
Trickstuff
some sram brakes

Dot brands
Sram
Hayes
Hope
formula

Shimano being the market leader with the low end dominated by Tektro I'm just gonna assume a vast majority of brakes today use mineral oil. And most of them can use the gravity bleed process and so most of them can also funnel bleed in one way or the other.

As to swapping a hose, well it does require a bleed but as outlined earlier, that at least is a very simple procedure. But the hose swapping itself is pretty much on par with housing swapping except you need less specialized tools with a hydraulic hose.

Housing
Hex key,
Cable cutter or dremel

Hose
crescent wrench
Knife
Also a table or wall comes in handy.

Good cable cutters are pretty expensive and a dremel even more so. Please tell me you're not one of those people who mash a housing to ruin with wire cutters..

Do you forget where you've stored used chemicals?

Which mechanical discs allow for replacing pads without removing the wheel?

that's really no surprise...

Which nightmare scenarios exactly? At this point I'd really like to know.


As I've experienced they do you mean?

So never a broken caliper or such with mechanicals? They should probably build space shuttles out of such indestructable things...


I think I hit a nerve. Why is this topic so precious to you?

Yet where you live is quite arid with dry air, low precipitation (relative to where I live), no ocean winds or moisture those bring.

Do you ride every day rain or shine?


So I use all those except the black gunk cables. Strange.

I'm beginning to think you're a kind of person who doesn't check your brakes before you set out...

Let's imagine a scenario shall we? You come home and it's wet slush all over. You leave the bike in the garage overnight like you always do. During the night the weather has gotten colder. In the morning you go pick up your bike for your daily commute but a squeeze of the brake levers reveals that the rear brake is frozen.

Oh bummer.

It would be pretty funny if I went out risking life and limb with a frozen rear brake just because cyccommute demands some drama, but what really happened was I picked another bike and was late from daycare. Bummer. But I suppose for some people that is a deathtrap situation.

Important semantical distinction and I can understand you missed it: modern hydraulics in general aside from SRAM (which are horrible. Avoid at all costs) are in fact easier to work on than mechanicals.

Something being easier does not make the other thing difficult. It makes it less easier.

But once you get past the fear of fluid dripping somewhere, hydraulics are incredibly simple things. The difficulty of bleeding and working with them is massively overblown. Perhaps by the times when they were difficult to work with. And by SRAM.

Canker

Speaking of things being overblown so is the difficulty of working with Sram brakes. Sure back in the day my avid(sram) juicy 5s were kind of a pita but my avid elixer 7s take maybe a few extra mins to do compared to a proper bleed of my shimano XTs. Shimano makes half butted bleeds easier but proper bleeding still had a lot of fiddly steps.

Maelochs

Here I must disagree.

Hydros are more complex by far. As you note, not Difficult ... but more complex.

Not excessively complex, but ... go read-the chain-waxing novella. For some folks even wiping a chain is too much work .

I have Spyre Cs and changing a cable or pads is really simple. Adjustment is just like adjusting any mechanical brake.

I have hydros on my MTB. Very, very low maintenance, but bleeding is more steps. More Simple, Easy steps, but more steps.

Again, though neither is better or worse because of that.

One could almost think it comes down to ... Personal Preference.

This is the sort of debate that by the time it is over, even if one person or the other can say, "I won," everyone involved feels a little soiled.

Bikers are good. Brakes on bikes are good.

Never before met a rider from Finland. Welcome.

Kapusta

Bike Forums: where anyone with a different experience than yours is wrong.

Germany_chris

I'm not this emotionally attached to my brakes

cyccommute 

No, they aren’t. Use better cables. Use better housing. As well as never having had brakes freeze, I’ve never had a cable corrode. It’s not just “a matter of time”. It’s a poor mechanic indeed that blames his tools.


You have certainly implied that brake cable freeze is a very common occurrence. Many others…including myself…have pointed out that they ride in bad winter weather and have never experienced a brake cable freezing.



Quit moving the goal posts. In your earlier statements you said that a brake bleed is easier than changing a brake cable. Your “bubble bleed for shortening a hose” is the equivalent of cutting off the end of a cable. And I can’t think of any “minor adjustment” on a hydraulic system that would introduce air. There’s nothing to “adjust”. Even replacing pads wouldn’t open the system.

The procedures I see on bleeding mineral oil brakes start with forcing the old oil out from the caliper with a syringe. Fresh oil is pushed up from the bottom so as to displace air in the easiest direction. After the old oil is displaced, oil is pumped through the system from the top but it isn’t gravity feed. Swapping hoses is going to leave you with a hose that is completely empty…i.e. full of air…so a simple “gravity bleed” isn’t going to get the air out.

As to tools, you are again misrepresenting the hydraulic system. To be fair you are missing the inner cable for the cable system but if you are changing hoses for the hydraulic system you have to add

4mm hex
2.5mm hex
open end wrench for the bleed port
mineral oil
barbs
olives
brake bleed kit which contains 5 to 6 more tools
hose for the bleed port
something to catch oil in
a whole bunch of rags

Your tool kit is far from complete.

No, I don’t mash housing with diagonal cutters. I do cut them with cable cutters and grind the end or just make a good blunt cut. But cable cutters are general tools that are used cables like derailer cable and cable housing. A bleed kit costs about the same as a set of good cable cutters and only has one use.

Stuff gets misplaced all the time. If you are trying to fill a 1L vessel 25ml at a time, that’s 40 brake bleeds. I’ll agree that brake bleeds don’t need to be done all that often so it would take years to fill a 1L vessel…perhaps decades…in a home setting.

Just about any of them. You could pull the pads out of an Avid BB7. There’s a tab that extends outside the caliper body. It’s not easy but removing the pads from a hydraulic system without removing the wheel is equally as difficult. What hydraulics can you remove the pads without removing the wheel? More importantly, why would you want to.

No, I haven’t. I’ve never even seen a broken mechanical caliper and I’ve seen hundreds of them from high end to the worst possible copies of the Avid BB5. I’ve never even seen on where the caliper was frozen from corrosion. They are incredibly robust.

It’s not that the topic is “precious” to me but that you are misrepresenting hydraulics. The brakes are not simple. They require maintenance that mechanicals don’t. They have complicated procedures for bleeding them. Look at the shop rates for a brake bleed ($30 to $100, depending on the system) compared to roughly $20 for cable and housing replacement.

Please read what you quoted. It’s right there. I’ve ridden in just about every weather condition imaginable up to and including hail storms. I’ve ridden…and crashed…in more freezing drizzle than any sane (and intelligent person) would.


No, I don’t check my brakes before I go out because I don’t put bikes away if something is wrong with it. I fix problems while I’m thinking about them. If there is something that I can’t fix right away because I don’t have the parts, I choose another bike. I have many more than one.

How do you get “wet slush all over” the bike? Slush on the lower part of the bike, I can see but how do you throw slush up on the brake cables? Most all of the bikes that I own have cables that run on the top tube or directly from the lever to the caliper along the fork. I have had derailer cables freeze up but most of the bikes I use for winter now have the derailer cables running along the top tube as well. I haven’t had a derailer cable freeze up on those either.

Are SRAM brakes not modern? They are sold now. And not all brakes sold today (or within the last 10 years) are Shimano nor mineral oil brakes. The bleed procedure for DOT brakes is pretty much the same for all DOT fluid brakes. But, again, my objection isn’t (necessarily) to the brakes themselves but to your representation of them as some how much easier to work on than cable systems. I’ve done bleeds on DOT brakes, including SRAM, and on mineral brakes. Neither one is a simple procedure and far more complicated than replacing a cable and housing.

cyccommute 

I’ll remind you, again, that exculio is the one who brought up frozen brakes and his fears of them. Many other posters…not just me…are scratching their heads over that one. As to calling me out on it, I called him out on his dramatics as well.

cyccommute 

My problem with the complexity of the bleed procedure is that there are more places where you can screw something up and have to start over or to screw something up and have to replace something. It’s pretty difficult to do that with a cable and housing. Cable and housing replacement certainly isn’t as difficult or onerous as exculixo has made it out to be.

And, let’s not forget that a brake bleed is about the equivalent of replacing an inner cable. If we include replacement of tubing…the equivalent of replacing housing…the complexity is increase several fold.

GamblerGORD53

My tour bike has a SA DRUM brake in the front. I squeeze the levers hard often. The cable went BOTH tours, 20,000 miles and 6 years. I use lovely SA levers.
Cable ends get frayed IF you take them apart. Even then, the last few years it has been less of a problem. Otherwise, I haven't broken a cable since my caliper brakes on old Raleighs. Often I reuse rear cables and casings on the front. It is simple to carry a spare cable. I did carry a cable cutter. LOL.
My Rohloff disc brake certainly also has cable TRP Spyres.
I certainly wouldn't use hydro if you paid me.

tomato coupe

Anyone can read the thread and see that you introduced "nightmare scenario" and "death trap" when referring to cable-actuated disc brakes. The hyperbole is on you, dude.

elcruxio

[QUOTE=cyccommute;22786282]No, they aren’t. Use better cables. Use better housing. As well as never having had brakes freeze, I’ve never had a cable corrode. It’s not just “a matter of time”. It’s a poor mechanic indeed that blames his tools.

And here's me thinking you were a chemist. Are the cables used in bicycles in fact totally impervious to corrosion?

Used to be relatively common where I live. But nowadays most people using disc brakes tend to use hydraulics.

I didn't have those issues when I lived up north where I got really bad winter weather. But it was colder and drier.

What the...? If you invent wacky scenarios out of thin air with no prior input from me and I refute you by explaining what are the situations where a bubble bleed is necessary, how is that moving the goalposts? The only goalpost that could have moved was the one you invented in bad faith with malicious inventive misreading of my comment.

But I know you were really proud of your "gotcha!" moment.

Anyway the adjustments where air might be introduced are adjusting the cable angle in the caliper via the banjo bolt or adjusting the hose twist in the lever via the hose bolt.

You should get your basics together.

You can do it that way. If you like wasting time. Gravity bleeding gets the air out just fine. Google the shimano funnel.

Again, This is basic stuff. I know you don't have hydraulic brakes and thus don't have a clue how to service them but acting like a master on the subject is just embarrassing.

Barbs, olives, oil and hose are as much tools as cables are. If you remember I also mentioned the bleed. Gravity bleeding requires the funnel and a piece of hose. As tools.

Cable cutters are pretty rare for someone not wrenching bikes. Also again, the funnel. I think thats like ten bucks.

personally I tend not to misplace hazardous materials. But that's just me.

All deore and higher shimanos, all road shimanos, all sram, all hopes, all higher end tektro and trp, all trickstuff, all maguras. I mean I could keep going but every mid and higher hydro caliper allows for hot swapping pads. So you can pull them out from the top side of the caliper.

You're right. Swapping BB7 pads without taking the wheel out is difficult because it's not really possible. The spring is in the way like in all mechanical calipers. And taking them out from the intended direction from the bottom when the wheel is in is just idiotic.

indeed. And so are current hydraulic calipers.

I suppose I could ask my LBS about how much bleeding is but I doubt it's any more than cable swapping.

Ie. You ride occasionally in a relatively arid environment. When you start riding daily, get back to me.


I am not surprised. Personally I always give my brakes a good squeeze before I set out just to make sure everything works as intended.


And you've ridden in all sorts of conditions? Right right...

And with that you've demonstrated what I suspected from the start. Your reading comprehension is at such a level that continuing is pointless. You either misunderstand and/or misinterpret maliciously. I suspect it's the latter.

rosefarts

Lots of fun stuff here.

I’ve never broken a brake cable in my life. I’m fairly sure the ones I’ve seen rendered inoperable were so the user could continue riding on bent rims.

I’ve never blown a hydro mid ride either. I have grabbed a bike and found the hydro completely empty. This is at least on par to grabbing a bike with a flat tire if you have all the parts. More than likely, this is a time you grab a different bike (3 in your garage is the minimum acceptable number).

I’ve also seen mechanical brakes that had a mysterious sponginess. Sometimes to the point they barely work. Always to the point that the mismatch with the front brake drives me crazy. Depending on the fault, this can be pretty time consuming to track down and eliminate. Sometimes the nuclear option of compressionless cables can cost almost as much as the brake system.

Hydro’s have gotten way easier to bleed over the years. Mineral oil systems seem to be dominating. Hopefully SRAM is paying attention to this too.

The feel for good hydro’s is better than the best cable rim brakes. IMO it’s good enough to learn a few new tricks at the workshop. It’s not so superior that I’d ever stop riding my rim brake bikes. I think this is where most forum users are, loving our disc brakes and still loving our old bikes too. It’s an extremely small segment that truly hates one or the other. They do tend to be rather dominant in these discussions though.

I still think that cable discs are pointless. I do like hydro rim brakes though. A Magura HS11 rim brake is $70 on Amazon right now, providing crushing (hyperbole) power, easy adjustment, and by design can’t be spongy. V-brakes are great but when it came time for me to choose between new and better rim brakes, the hydro was the only thing on my list.

Canker

Why are people so biased against Dot? Shimano brakes being "easier" to bleed has nothing to do with mineral oil. If you swap the seals over to the kind made to handle DOT fluid and used Dot nothing would change. Yeah it eats paint if you just leave on it there rather than cleaning it off but I clean mineral oil off my paint too. It isn't like it is going to ruin your paint in a couple mins. It absorbs water. Yep that is a good thing. It distributes the water through out the whole system rather than just letting it pool in the caliper. Don't drink your hydraulic fluid.

Eric F 

Maybe his riding conditions are different than yours, and this is something he has actually experienced. It turns out that not all of us have the same experiences. It seems to me like you're the one that has over-blown elcruxio's comments into "fears" and "nightmare scenarios". Mechanical issues aren't necessarily catastrophes, but just something that has to be dealt with. Such is the nature the bicycle machine.

GhostRider62

Not to disrump the discussion but I have couple questions WRT SRAM AXS HRD brakes. I just got the bike in late November and only have about 1040 miles on it. How do I know if they need bled already? The left (front) lever almost goes to the bar tape. Is this a bleeding issue? The left lever feels squishy and on my car, I would bleed the brakes with a whimpy pedal. The pads are shot, I was going to try that first.

Also, If I want to put on TT bar setup, I will have to disconnect the lines at the levers. Can I just hook the lines up in the new position with different levers on the TT bars (assuming length is ok), or is bleeding necessary? I assume the oil is still ok.

Paul Barnard

A couple of things here. I have never had a bicycle crash because I didn't have enough braking power. I have had several get offs when I inadvertently grabbed too much front brake in a bit of a pickle. The worst of those occurred with hydraulic disc brakes. Sure, with more skill, I may not have crashed. I have never been stranded as a result of mechanical brakes. I have been stranded and needed a shop to rectify the issue as a result of hydraulic brakes. Sure, with more skill, I could have solved the issue myself. There are multitudes of threads where folks have had issues bleeding hydraulic brakes. I can't recall any threads where any of us were having difficulty getting cable tension sorted out.

Love me some one finger hydraulic braking on long downhills, but that is the only place I prefer hydros.

TRP Spykes and Spyres are my sweet spot in performance, cost and ease of maintenance.

wolfchild

Anytime there is a discussion on brakes it's almost always the hydro disc fan boys who try to convince everybody that cable actuated brake systems are weak, unreliable, prone to failure, complex to set up, complex to adjust and inadequate for any type of serious riding.

tomato coupe

Not relevant to my comment.

Eric F 

Do you have any specific examples of when that actually happened? I tend to be involved with brake discussion threads and haven't seen the behavior you're describing from disc-brake proponents. This isn't the first time you've made a claim like this, and it just doesn't match up with my observation. Granted, I could have missed something, which is why I'm hoping you can provide an example.

50PlusCycling

it depends on the brake fluid. Some fluids absorb water, which reduces the performance of the brakes, and can lead to corrosion of the cylinders and pistons in the braking system. And it is also possible that air can get into the system over time,