How to get a TRP Hy/Rd caliper to work

[yelfordrover]

There seems to have been a lot of issues with this caliper and older road levers not giving the best pull ratio leading to the levers pulling all the way to the bars. During a bit of Googling, I've seen that some have got the system to work by clamping the inner cable on the underside & opposite side of the pinch bolt to normal. I tried this & indeed it does work BUT will there be a downside to this "fudge"?

[Brucey]

I'm not quite sure how secure the cable will be; I guess that will depend on exactly how you have done it. However I can think of two possible shortcomings

1) the brake power will be reduced (less system MA)
2) the strain relief for the cable will be lost.

I guess you will soon know if the first thing is a big deal for you or not.

I'd expect the cable to be more likely to fatigue and fray near the pinch bolt; if you are observant and replace the cable as soon as there are one or two broken strands, maybe this is OK.

cheers

[foxyrider]

I found the best way to improve the HyRd performance was to fit a bigger rotor!

Mine run with Athena 11 ergo's, and I have to admit to setting the cable a bit short to the recommendation but it seems to work adequately. I hate having a long lever pull so i'm willing to forsake a degree of the self adjustment to give me better stopping on my local lanes where scrubbing a lot of speed quickly is very important.

[Brucey]

...Mine run with Athena 11 ergo's, and I have to admit to setting the cable a bit short to the recommendation but it seems to work adequately. I hate having a long lever pull so i'm willing to forsake a degree of the self adjustment to give me better stopping on my local lanes where scrubbing a lot of speed quickly is very important.

I would not advise anyone to do that; it isn't a question of sacrificing 'a degree of self-adjustment', you will lose it all. Once they are set that way, you effectively have a 'closed system' but without benefit of a handlebar adjuster.

However it does occur to me that if you have QR in the brake lever, you may be able to get the brakes to self-adjust by using that from time to time, which ought to allow the caliper to go full stroke and open the compensation port.

TRP don't advertise the fact. but these brake calipers are really intended to work with shimano's new standard cable pull (i.e. NSSLR) for road brake levers. This is as per all new model STIs since 2008, and is appreciably longer cable pull vs older STIs (and most campag ergos too).

As with any cable-operated system, cable quality is very important. IME most of the flex in a system with these calipers is usually in the cables.

cheers

[Tiberius]

I have them ....working with 10 speed Shimano 105 STIs (bought 2016)

Once set up EXACTLY as per the instructions they work perfectly.

The original pads do wear quickly.....I now use Nukeproof semi-metallic.

Plenty of power for the many hills around here......

[Gattonero]

There seems to have been a lot of issues with this caliper and older road levers not giving the best pull ratio leading to the levers pulling all the way to the bars. During a bit of Googling, I've seen that some have got the system to work by clamping the inner cable on the underside & opposite side of the pinch bolt to normal. I tried this & indeed it does work BUT will there be a downside to this "fudge"?

There are obvious values of cable pull ratio to put into accounts, a lot more than with standard rim-brake calipers. By its own nature a disk-brake has the pads closer to the braking track (the rotor) so is less tolerant in terms of "allowance". You can adjust with the grub screw(s) up to a certain extent.
There's one thing that people seems to not mention: thickness of the rotor!

and btw, Tektro and TRP have an awful fixing for the brake wire, it does squash it and frays badly even when new and moderate tightening. I would avoid any alteration of this, ask the manufacturer instead.

[yelfordrover]

Would the fully mechanical TRP Spyre have the same problem of "lever to the bars" with older generation levers?

[Brucey]

Would the fully mechanical TRP Spyre have the same problem of "lever to the bars" with older generation levers?

not as bad; with the spyres (and unlike the Hy/Rds) you can adjust the running clearance of the pads to the rotor. You will still have a powerful (and possibly slightly mushy) brake though; the system MA will be a bit higher than intended. The running clearance is limited by how straight the rotors are.

With the Hy/Rds if you try to adjust the running clearance you are likely to make it so that the compensation port is always closed, and this means you lose the self-adjusting action.

cheers

[Brucey]

I have them ....working with 10 speed Shimano 105 STIs (bought 2016)

Once set up EXACTLY as per the instructions they work perfectly.

The original pads do wear quickly.....I now use Nukeproof semi-metallic.

Plenty of power for the many hills around here......

ST-5600 10s (with washing lines) was launched 2007 and (I think) has the old brake pull ratio
ST-5700 10s (without washing lines) was launched 2011 and (I think) has the new brake pull ratio

cheers

[dragonrider]

These brakes do generate a lot of correspondence and you may recall my earlier exchanges, including sending my old faulty TRP-HY caliper to Brucey. He subsequently gave a good write up on his results, which was not at all comforting. I summarise here but in the end I ditched them and fitted BB7s. It was the best days work I ever did!

I went from poor brake power, constant adjustment and reliability problems to now having confidence inspiring smooth braking that hardly ever needs adjusting. So my advice is dump them. My experience, and judging by what others are saying, you will spend hours and hours on TRP-HYs and they will never be really working well. The BB7 is simple and robust and is all you ever need for wet winter descents.

[yelfordrover]

Hi Dragonrider,
Which levers are you using with the BB7's?

[Tiberius]

TRP don't advertise the fact. but these brake calipers are really intended to work with shimano's new standard cable pull (i.e. NSSLR) for road brake levers. This is as per all new model STIs since 2008, and is appreciably longer cable pull vs older STIs (and most campag ergos too).

I think that you may well have hit the nail on the head there and solved the puzzle of why some people have issues and some don't.

My levers are Shimano 105 ST-5703 and they work perfectly with these callipers.

[Brucey]

TRP don't advertise the fact. but these brake calipers are really intended to work with shimano's new standard cable pull (i.e. NSSLR) for road brake levers. This is as per all new model STIs since 2008, and is appreciably longer cable pull vs older STIs (and most campag ergos too).

I think that you may well have hit the nail on the head there and solved the puzzle of why some people have issues and some don't.

My levers are Shimano 105 ST-5703 and they work perfectly with these callipers.

Some bike manufacturers have even fitted these brakes with 'the wrong levers' too, it is that poorly understood.

The other big issue is that folk (including LBS folk...) don't adhere to the instructions when they set the brakes up. RTFM! They think that 'it must be wrong' to have a bite point about half way through the lever stroke, and adjust them so that they bite earlier despite the fact that it destroys the one significant advantage this system has, which is self-adjustment.

Any hybrid system (whether it be brakes, or gears, or something else again) can possess either the best attributes or the worst attributes of both systems that are built into it. My view is that, for many users, the balance is wrong with this system, and like 'Dragonrider' they would be better off with an inherently simpler system such as a BB7. There is certainly less to go wrong and they are arguably easier to set up, too.

cheers

[dragonrider]

Sorry for the delay in getting back on this. My brake levers are Shimano 105s about two years old, operating a triple x 10 speed, and they are the hidden cable tape I.e. taped to the bars. I can't find the model type number. I also confirm they were the ones used unsuccessfully with the TRP-HY brakes and the same ones now working perfectly with the BB7s.

[dragonrider]

Further thoughts! None of the above addresses the phenomenal rate of pad wear on the original pads. If I recall everything was ok for a couple of months with just about ok brake performance but one notoriously wet ride with a couple of long descents pretty well brought the levers up to the bars. The pads were shot and if there was any automatic adjustment it was beaten by the rate of pad wear. I think that they realised they had poor brake performance so fitted very soft pads to compensate.

After I replaced the pads the story went downhill, if you will excuse the pun. Too much of my life went into trying to fix these.

I conclude an over-complex design, and the design and development team got dazzled by their bright idea. Sometimes it is difficult to say forget all this development work we have invested in and ditch the project - been there myself!