I hate disc brakes - help!

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gregoryoftours
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Re: I hate disc brakes - help!

Post by gregoryoftours »

rareposter wrote: 25 May 2022, 7:01pm
NATURAL ANKLING wrote: 25 May 2022, 2:42pm Hi,
Brake fluid.......what type!
Splitting Calliper halves in the field.............
Opps dont lose the o rings...........

You can repair cable brakes under water :mrgreen:
There's two types of brake fluid, mineral oil and DOT. Thats not exactly difficult...
Splitting caliper halves?!
They're one-piece units now. Some of the early Hope units were two halves, anything now is one-piece.

A friend fitted cable discs for an ultra-endurance ride on the grounds of "easy maintenance". Suffice to say that at the top of a mountain pass in freezing rain, they were not able to be fixed (it was a cable problem). Hydros wouldn't have gone wrong in the first place.
Many, I'd say most modern disc calipers are still 2 halves bolted together. And while there is mineral oil and dot, there is also dot 5 which must not be used as it's silicone rather than glycol based like other dot fluids.
Last edited by gregoryoftours on 28 May 2022, 2:05am, edited 1 time in total.
PH
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Re: I hate disc brakes - help!

Post by PH »

jimster99 wrote: 25 May 2022, 11:57am I hate cable disc brakes also, especially on quick release rims!! I took one of my bikes to a bike shop because when you lock the front brake and rock the bike back and forth, the front wheel visibly twists in the hub, like when the headset is really loose, but in my case, the headset wasn't loose!

The mechanic looked at it ... and said "That's normal". :D
The hub visibly twisting isn't normal, think what that would feel like under braking :shock:
The rocking is pretty normal, I think it's the pads moving within the caliper, most cable discs do this, regardless of the fork or axle. Paul Components make a big deal about their precision engineered Klamper brake not doing it and it doesn't, but that doesn't make any difference to it's function.
The QR skewer issue is the brake action unscrewing it, rear facing dropouts solve this, thru axles even more so, I'm still happy enough using a QR (Actually the hex key security type) I periodically check it by loosening and retightening, it a precautionary habit like any other, such as checking pads and cables.
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NATURAL ANKLING
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Re: I hate disc brakes - help!

Post by NATURAL ANKLING »

Hi,
rareposter wrote: 25 May 2022, 7:01pm
NATURAL ANKLING wrote: 25 May 2022, 2:42pm Hi,
Brake fluid.......what type!
Splitting Calliper halves in the field.............
Opps dont lose the o rings...........

You can repair cable brakes under water :mrgreen:
There's two types of brake fluid, mineral oil and DOT. Thats not exactly difficult...
Splitting caliper halves?!
They're one-piece units now. Some of the early Hope units were two halves, anything now is one-piece.
Well Er............. :P
https://www.cashcarsbuyer.com/dot-5-brake-fluid/

One piece Opposed piston calliper without split body............ maybe, I am not that hot on bicycle hydraulics, got a link?

Ah Hope................
8827-20406-full-e4-silver-7.jpg
But nice gaping holes to plug.......?.........more seals / "Orings"........ :P
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NATURAL ANKLING
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Re: I hate disc brakes - help!

Post by NATURAL ANKLING »

Hi,
So called maintenance free hydraulic brakes have no mechanical sliders or pivots to foul up.
Only opposed piston types have this, then only the pistons are moving.

To get this you either split the calliper or as in the case of the pic Hope E4 as an example, which is opposed piston, you plug the piston holes (bores) of one side, this has to be made this way so to gain access to the piston bores, to enable to machine them!
Hope E4 4 pot
Hope E4 4 pot
hope 4 pot opposed with plugs and seals
hope 4 pot opposed with plugs and seals
Seal kit 4 pot showing 4 piston seals 2 "O" rings
Seal kit 4 pot showing 4 piston seals 2 "O" rings
Seal kit above includes two "O" rings to seal the piston bore plugs.

I am not experienced with bicycle hydraulic brake systems but have 40+ years experience of working on motor bicycle and car brake systems.
Single piston (thats one or two or pistons on one side of the disc) systems which are most common, on car etc, work well with correct maintenance.
Once you adopt an opposed piston system, machining practices mean you either split the calliper with seals / or use the hope system above.
The plugs in the hope calliper have to be substantial enough to withstand the hydraulic pressure.

Hydraulic systems particular on cars are very reliable........especially if you change the brake fluid regularly.
There is no reason that bike hydraulic brakes cant be reliable.....if they are maintained well.
Typical single piston with sliders- car type
Typical single piston with sliders- car type
4 pot calliper with a Brake line link external, not internal seals between calliper halves (split)
4 pot calliper with a Brake line link external, not internal seals between calliper halves (split)
Opposed piston with split halves allow for the most compact and low profile callipers, like above example.
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NATURAL ANKLING
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Re: I hate disc brakes - help!

Post by NATURAL ANKLING »

Hi,
Here you will find exploded diagrams and manuals for many brake designs that hope use.
A single piston design does not appear in there line up but they have been used, maybe not by Hope.
Its a mini car version single piston, not unlike single actuating plunger cable disc brakes, with slider pins to centralise the pads about the disc.
Hydraulic opposed piston eliminate that mechanical slider / pivot, hence self aligning pads.

https://www.hopetech.com/product-docume ... mini-brake
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Airsporter1st
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Re: I hate disc brakes - help!

Post by Airsporter1st »

horizon wrote: 26 May 2022, 12:00pm Some years ago I looked at installing a front disc brake on my disc-ready Sardar, really just to try them out. The cost of the new brake and wheel deterred me but my starting point was actually the question of the fluid.

The idea of using DOT fluid (I used to bleed the brakes on my Renault 4 in my younger days so I'm familiar with bleeding brakes) appalled me. However I do accept that that is an overly strong reaction: it can be used safely and you don't need to store lots of it (I never did find out how you dispose of it though). This got me thinking about mineral fluid and I worked through this webpage to get the pros and cons:

https://epicbleedsolutions.com/blogs/ar ... ineral-oil

I gave up on hydraulics at that point and turned to the possibility of using cable discs. What I read is that cable discs are far inferior to hydraulics and not that much better than rim brakes. Given the time investment needed to change my bikes over and learn new (albeit not too difficult) skills, I concluded that, for an existing bike user, discs were a fool's errand and of course the fact that we already have very good brakes in the form of Vs.

Repairing and maintaining a bicycle can be at times a little toxic, pricey, complicated and frustrating so in that sense, hydraulic brakes don't add to the mix. I would be happy to recommend discs to someone buying a new bike (on the basis of what I have read) but it's still the fluid that would make that less than full-hearted. And I would definitely hesitate to recommend discs to a young person, though I think that particular ship has long sailed, as they say.
In fairness, I would think a ‘young person’ would be more open minded about using and maintaining hydraulic brakes. They require very little knowledge/skill and the necessary tools can be bought for £20 or so. No more difficult than other maintenance operations on a bike, just different.
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horizon
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Re: I hate disc brakes - help!

Post by horizon »

Airsporter1st wrote: 1 Jun 2022, 9:47am
In fairness, I would think a ‘young person’ would be more open minded about using and maintaining hydraulic brakes. They require very little knowledge/skill and the necessary tools can be bought for £20 or so. No more difficult than other maintenance operations on a bike, just different.
I would be interested to hear others' views on that though I don't doubt what you are saying except perhaps about being careful with the DOT fluid.
When the pestilence strikes from the East, go far and breathe the cold air deeply. Ignore the sage, stay not indoors. Ho Ri Zon 12th Century Chinese philosopher
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NATURAL ANKLING
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Re: I hate disc brakes - help!

Post by NATURAL ANKLING »

Hi,
As someone who fixes everything including darning my socks :P
People have too much disposable income and are more inclined to pay so-called professionals to work on their modes of transport.
All bicycle brakes are tricky and fiddly to set up and need correct adjustment an alignment, for good reliable performance.

It's not unusual for me on a bad day covering only several tens of miles having to re-adjust my brakes.

Things like joining chains without magic links, setting up cantilever brakes, cable disc brakes, and fully dismantling free wheels and free hubs, wheel building.

All the above come into the category of things that are fiddly and frustrating and needs good patience in my opinion.

On Motorcycles with exposed fluid reservoir you need to change the brake fluid every year without fail.
I find that changing the brake fluid on your car at least every two years makes the system more reliable and it will last several times longer without having any problems.

I'm afraid that if you add things like obnoxious fluid to a bicycle you're bound to have extra headaches.

I know there is a hard-core group of people who do their own bike maintenance and their own vehicle maintenance, I'm inclined to think that most people rely on paying people to maintain their vehicles across the board for cycling.

I think it's gonna take a long time to reverse the throwaway society And most of us will be long dead before people start doing their own stuff in mass?
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rareposter
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Re: I hate disc brakes - help!

Post by rareposter »

NATURAL ANKLING wrote: 1 Jun 2022, 11:59am Hi,
As someone who fixes everything including darning my socks :P
People have too much disposable income and are more inclined to pay so-called professionals to work on their modes of transport.
All bicycle brakes are tricky and fiddly to set up and need correct adjustment an alignment, for good reliable performance.

.....

I know there is a hard-core group of people who do their own bike maintenance and their own vehicle maintenance, I'm inclined to think that most people rely on paying people to maintain their vehicles across the board for cycling.
I'm an ex-bike shop mechanic. I used to maintain my own bikes more or less all the time with the exception of suspension. However that was in the days of external cables, fairly "standard" kit (or at least, not the plethora of standards we have nowadays) and it was indeed quite straightforward - also I could quite routinely use the shop workshop and tools for doing it.

I'm not going to go out and buy specialist tools and fluid for brake bleeding that needs doing once every couple of years and will likely be obsolete for the next iteration of brakes that I have. Why would I buy an expensive bottle of oil when I only need 20ml of it? Why would I buy a £40 bleed kit for use once every 18 months? I'd need a couple of kits as well, different brakes on my MTB vs my CX bikes. That's more wasteful than just taking it to a shop and letting them sort it all.

Also, my disc brakes don't go wrong - there's nothing there to wear, stretch or break. I can drop new pads in in 2 mins when required (which is also incredibly infrequently).
mattheus
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Re: I hate disc brakes - help!

Post by mattheus »

rareposter wrote: 1 Jun 2022, 12:15pm
I'm an ex-bike shop mechanic. I used to maintain my own bikes more or less all the time <snip> ...
I'm not going to go out and buy specialist tools and fluid for brake bleeding that needs doing once every couple of years and will likely be obsolete for the next iteration of brakes that I have. Why would I buy an expensive bottle of oil when I only need 20ml of it? Why would I buy a £40 bleed kit for use once every 18 months? I'd need a couple of kits as well, different brakes on my MTB vs my CX bikes. That's more wasteful than just taking it to a shop and letting them sort it all.
This sounds like a strong argument against discs to me. Or at least a strong argument for how they bring extra complexity into riders' lives.

And this is from a qualified source i.e. "ex bike shop mechanic".
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CJ
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Re: I hate disc brakes - help!

Post by CJ »

rareposter wrote: 1 Jun 2022, 12:15pmWhy would I buy an expensive bottle of oil when I only need 20ml of it?
Because I'll need 20ml of it next time too, and the next... and it costs a lot less per 20ml if I buy a bigger bottle in the first place. And that's why I choose brakes that use mineral oil rather than any kind of 'dot' fluid, because the latter absorbs water from the atmosphere, so it really does need changing every year (whereas mineral oil can tolerate a bit of neglect) and the bottle you kept from last time will by then be no good!

So I got rid of the Hope calipers on my MTB (my first experience of hydraulic disks - which was good when they worked right and a whole lot of trouble when they didn't!) and went Shimano. End of troubles.

Nowadays I maintain a couple of road/gravel/touring bikes with discs, both with flat-mount calipers. These are very tricky to align correctly, however I find one has to do it only once. My wife's flat-bar tourer has Shimano road calipers operated by mountain levers (a mixture that hasn't been possible with cables for many a long year) and this hasn't needed any attention other than new pads since I built it up four years ago.

For economy and because I had no desire to go like Spinal Tap 'to eleven', I wanted to transfer the high quality 2×10-speed transmission with which I'd upgraded my old Thorn Audax, onto the carbon gravel bike frame that replaces it. So I chose TRP HyRoad cable-to-hydraulic calipers. I wasn't expecting such good performance from this hybrid setup (especially as I didn't have any of the special compressionless housing you're supposed to use) but was pleasantly surprised. They're much better than any cable discs I've ever used (including Avid's best BB jobbies) and like my wife's bike: are perfectly self-adjusting and have not required anything other than new pads in three years. I bought a kit of tools and spares for bleeding, filling and maintenance, that I've played with but haven't really needed.

So AFAICT the path of disc-brake happiness is paved in mineral oil and preferably made by Shimano or TRP!
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Re: I hate disc brakes - help!

Post by PH »

rareposter wrote: 1 Jun 2022, 12:15pm Why would I buy a £40 bleed kit for use once every 18 months?
I wouldn't.
Complete kit for my brakes, including 50ml of mineral oil is £16 from here, it even includes a rotor straightening gizmo:
https://epicbleedsolutions.com/collecti ... -bleed-kit

If you want to keep a shop employed, that's your choice. I doubt you can make a case for it being an economical decision.
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NATURAL ANKLING
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Re: I hate disc brakes - help!

Post by NATURAL ANKLING »

Hi,
For information only -
https://epicbleedsolutions.com/blogs/ar ... ineral-oil
Seems very informative :)
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zenitb
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Re: I hate disc brakes - help!

Post by zenitb »

CJ wrote: 1 Jun 2022, 6:30pm
rareposter wrote: 1 Jun 2022, 12:15pmWhy would I buy an expensive bottle of oil when I only need 20ml of it?
....and that's why I choose brakes that use mineral oil rather than any kind of 'dot' fluid, because the latter absorbs water from the atmosphere, so ..... and went Shimano. End of troubles.

....

So AFAICT the path of disc-brake happiness is paved in mineral oil and preferably made by Shimano or TRP!
I am going with CJ on this one. Like the OP I had a battle royal with Avid brakes (juicy?) that Giant provided as OEM brakes on our Giant MTBs. The things jammed and getting the pads out was a nightmare. Plus all the DOT fluid issues.

I initially replaced them with Shimano Deore disc brakes and it was night and day different with simple pad changes and great power. when I extended one of the hoses (high stem) I discovered my local bike shop couldnt bleed the brakes properly so I bought a £20 kit on ebay and got the air out myself. For my commuter i now have even cheaper Shimano hydro disc brakes (MT200) and these have been similarly trouble free with just pad changes. Super powerful as well.

Cable disks and Vs are easier if you have to rennovate a bike from scratch...but if you buy a new set of Shimano MTB hydro brakes they are very easy to live with IMO.

(I put two sets of Avid brakes into a sweet tin and gave them to my friend Martin. he "likes avid" and it sounds like he somehow got them going...way too hard for me though)
Stevek76
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Re: I hate disc brakes - help!

Post by Stevek76 »

I had avid elixir 1s on my old MTB that were apparently notorious for issues but they seemed ok to me. I also didn't change the fluid for years but I never did the kind of descents that would've got even old DOT fluid to boiling point.

That said, the fact that dot fluid 'goes off' along with its other issues made me specifically avoid SRAM brakes on the new MTB.
rareposter wrote: 1 Jun 2022, 12:15pm I'd need a couple of kits as well, different brakes on my MTB vs my CX bikes.
Separate kits aren't always as necessary as claimed. Main issue is not getting dot and mineral oil mixed up. I reused my avid kit on the new slx brakes just fine (after a thorough 'decontamination'). The lever port threading is identical and there's no functional difference between a syringe and that weird funnel cup thing Shimano specs.
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