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I dunno anything about these brakes, but the automotive reference I think of when I hear DB8 isn't Toyota, it's Aston Martin.
I know, it sounds like an extremely long time and goes against a lot of common advice but brakes do not need to be bled that often. The way you can tell the fluid isn't contaminated is that the preformance of the brake doesn't change and I'll only do a bleed if the brakes aren't performing like normal or I need to split the hoses.
It does depend on how often you use it and what fluid you're using but with good quality fluid they really stay working well a long time. My downhill bike is over 5 years since the last bleed and still working like normal for the handful of days it gets ridden each year. My hardtail 3 years and enduro bike just over a year.
I’m curious about the Galfer Purple. Do they run quiet like OEM organic, or loud like OEM metallic?
I have dreams performance like metallic pads but aren’t noisy and last ok. Tried Galfer Green/Race and great pads but wore too fast.
From my time on purples - they were pretty quiet. Just took a touch more time to warm up to full power. Definitely not loud like metalic pads.
Only now you mention you meant a DH bike you hardly use, and different intervals for other bikes. It would've been best if you did not try to boast about it that way when it only feels like a bike you don't care about at all given the lack of use as well. Whether your enduro bike is either bled each year or if you only meant that the last bleed was 1 year ago, it is quite different from only mentioning every 5 years.
On top of that you also mentioned pad changes which also makes for even more confusion because it depends on which pads, what kind of riding and how much use. If it's a bike you hardly use, boasting about changing pads each 15-18 months is just irrelevant information.
The more I read your first reply now after I now know more of a context, it sounds like someone talking about a bike with normal use, except it just isn't...
I agree, take a little longer to bed in and warm up, but quieter than the red pads and great at dealing with heat and slow wearing.
So, trying to find peace and quiet I got some Trickstuff Standard pads for my V4 brakes, I started to bed them in on the road and then hit the trails, just a small ride with 230m of downhill, I felt they lacked bite almost as if they were not bed in so I helped them out today by rubbing them together under the sink.
Curious on the next ride
The Power pads always took the first 3 corners of a trail to be up to power
Also, the standard pads while being organic they look much more metallic
Are Shimano rotors just garbage now?
I put some RT-66’s on my GFs bike a while back and the flatness was so bad the levers pulsed like the bike had ABS. I attributed it to them being cheap rotors.
I just put some new XT brakes and rotors on my bike (MT-8120 with RT-MT800) and they pulse under braking too.
I’m not sure these M8120’s are gonna be on the bike for long. This feels bad.
Were they straight?
Honestly I never find rotors straight out of the box, shimano and sram being the worse ones, the bigger hs2 are the worst ones for sure
I had luck with both the Magura and Trp ones being thicker but never perfect out of the box,
So it might be that, if they’re bad then of course they won’t feel good as they would be pushing the pad back in some spots
I didn’t have any problems getting them running straight in the calipers.
Going up 20 mm, in my experience, isn't going to get them that close, especially on an ebike. I'd look at upgrading the brakes at that point and reusing the icetech's. The Mavens and TRP's are damn good but spending the extra $200 or so to get some Hope T4's is seriously worth the consideration, they are worth every penny and more.
I have both Mavens and T4V4’s. The Hopes are good, but absolutely not worth an extra $200.
I’d actually say that the Mavens are better brakes IF you can get them to behave. The Hopes are kinda vague feeling.
not worth the extra $200? ( first i'd love to know where in the world we have all that price difference, a Maven Silver in NZ is the same as V4 braided ), but even if it was to be 200$ they're worth it just for the quality, let alone the control they've got. And i still believe when on braided with a nice thick rotor and proper bleed they feel everything but vague.
Just checking them side by side, the quality and finish are nowhere near, especially the caliper is in another world, then working on them you see even more difference, how the pistons move freely on the hope vs the ones in the mavens requiring a thai massage to attempt to move decently.
Shimano RT6x and RT7x rotors now appear to be simply stamped and then sent out the door without subsequent lapping or machining, so the surface isn't even. I've had numerous problems with brand new metallic pads not making contact with very much of the surface of brand new rotors. This is one of the reasons I use Hayes rotors these days.
I do have a pair of older RT64M rotors that have clearly had a finishing pass, so maybe you're right and they've changed something. Or the M is for "machined"?
New hope brakes, im sure this includes the new bleed screw lever body.
Thanks, money is a bit tight at the moment to be blowing huge amounts on what is basically "dads hobby" hence the question of putting a wig on a pig and making the shimano's a bit better. My buddy owns a shop, so someone will take off the mavens from a new bike and I might come in like a seagull and snag a deal
Sorry, I didn't mean mean the post to mislead or be confusing. The point I was trying to make was that modern brakes are really reliable and the service intervals of the past are no longer applicable, especially when using rotors that are big enough to prevent them getting too hot.
For context when I mentioned 4-5 years between bleeds I was talking about normal use. The reason my current enduro bike is 1 year is that I only built it last year. My previous enduro bike, that was ridden multiple times a week, raced regularly and taken to many shuttling holidays had a period of 4 years between bleeds and at the end I noticed that the pistons were a bit sticky even after lubing and so changed the seals and bled the brakes. I use Hope sintered pads because I ride a lot in the wet and they are the most consistent with the bonus of lasting a really long time - I just changed the rear ones in my current enduro bike after 15 months. Again that includes weekly riding with access to an uplift, a handful of races and shuttling holidays. The downside of the sintered pads is they lack bite and power when cold, but once on the trail the power is fine and a trade off I happily make for consistency.
Her RT-66 rotors were stamped like that. I figured that was the problem and that their nice machined XT RT-800 rotors would be fine.
I guess that might not be the case.
I have had good results by roughing up the shiny side of the rotor with some abrasive paper. Works well enough but should not be needed from new, will be using other brands of rotor in future.
I assume the construction of the "Freeza" laminated rotors means they're pretty flat from the factory, although I understand they have their own issues
Shimano may well have changed their production around, but its also good to keep in mind that there are a lot of counterfeit Shimano and Sram rotors floating around on the interwebs. I've only seen them using all steel construction though, so not sure if there are knockoff alu-spidered freeza rotors out there. I'm actually using some of the counterfeit ones on my DJ bike, and so far so good.
It is also possible that Shimano had some bad batches of rotors, and it might be worth seeing if you can warranty them. I had some Shimano calipers with leaky pistons that they warrantied, and also hubs with wonky end caps so the outer face was not parallel to the dropout, which they also replaced without hassle.
I bought them from Jenson so I would hope they’re legit.
Looking at them, it could also just be a really poor design. Maybe I’m feeling when the big cutout passes through the pads.
Likewise I bought mine from Pushy's and MTB Direct, so almost no chance that they're counterfeits.
Hard disagree. In my experience, going up 20mm in rotor size makes a consistent and noticeable difference, such that I plan on never messing with 200mm rotors ever again. 220 front and rear all the time for me, and I've even gone up to a 180mm rear on my road bike. I miiiiight pull a Brosnan and mess around with a smaller front rotor up front on my MTB if I go back to Mavens, just for funzies, but never on my rear brake. You can pry my 220mm rear rotor from my cold, dead, but definitely not arm-pumped hands.
Are you taking a 180 rear post mount up to 220? What adapter are you using? 2x 20mm would seem wonky if that's the case.
EDIT: Never mind... this must be new bc I swear I've searched this before....
https://support.sram.com/hc/en-us/articles/23146361351707-Does-Maven-re…
galfer even makes a +63mm pm adapter, and Reserve components have a +60mm pm, so you can go from a 160pm bike to a 220 rotor or 223 with the galfer one
As an experiment, I just swapped out the 200 rotors for 180s on my little trail bike.
And it's such a big difference!
It’s an extra 10% braking surface per wheel revolution. If you don’t notice that it’s because you’re nowhere near the limit on the 200s, which is totally fine. Just don’t preach that as gospel when it’s clearly not the case.
Should have phrased that better, my point was that going up 20mm is not going to make enough of a difference to make a set of lower end Shimanos feel similar in power to set of Mavens. Personally, I run 220 HS2's with my T4's so I'm not turning poor 200 centrelines into funny rainbow colors but I didn't feel any massive jumps in power between the two, closer to going to a slightly more aggro pad compound.
Interestingly you might be better off turning your rotors colors vs sizing up. Not knowing what the rotor arms look like on your specific setup makes it all armchair qb’ing but, if your not seeing colors it means the brakes are not getting up to working temp, and based on the pad compound that could be having a negative impact on the overall brake power and bite crisp’ness.
I ran mtx gold pads for a year or so and could only get them into the Goldilocks zone, no pun intended, very infrequently and I’m a pretty decent charger and weight 205+. When they did get there they were great, amazing bite and good power, but when they weren’t there they were good but not great. Sinter greens get there way quicker for me with no perceptible fade. YMMV.
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