Hi everyone,

I got my new bike recently, its fitted with shimano M575 disk brakes with 180mm on the front and 160mm at the rear. the brakes seem like they are a bit lacking in power, with the front being the worse of the two. Its that bad that the lever nearly comes all the way back to the bar!! Not even enough power to do a wee stoppie. The company that supplied the bike have told me to take it to my LBS to get bled, and they'll cover the cost, but if this doesn't work I recon I'll need to upgrade the brakes. I was looking at Avid Elixer 5's but I've been told that they wont work with my cetrelock rotors and that they aren't as reliable as shimano. I can't afford to spend too much so has anyone got any other recommendations?

Cheers

mike

They should have plenty of power. Certainly sounds like they need a bleed. After that they should feel firm, if they are still lacking in power then it could be contaminated pads or disk (new pads, scrub disks should fix it)

EDIT: just re-read your post, if it was brand new then I'd be sending it back

Shimano brakes work well – get them looked at.

Clean the rotors & pads first. Get some brake cleaner from your LBS and do the discs, and also clean the pads off.

A quick fix if they're not knackered is to spray some brake cleaner on them and then waft a match/lighter past them, the flame off will remove contaminants, just then give them another spray and a wipe and put them back in and see how it goes.

If still spongy/lackign power get them bled, as said before those brakes are plenty powerful enough to be honest unless you're slightly on the chunky side and require bigger rotors or a bit of a gravity fiend.

I'll let the LBS look at it before I send it back. Hopefully all will be well after they are bled. If I need new pads the suppliers will pay for them.
Cheers for the quick response guys, I won't be buying new brakes quite yet!

Thats the brakes been bled and fixed by the very helpful folk at MacDonald cycles in Edinburgh. Both front and rear pads had got contaminated, so with new ones in and the front bled the performance is night loads better! There's still quite alot of lever travel on the front, but with a big squeeze I can lock both wheels or stoppie and hop quite easily.
i'm still tempted to upgrade to the SLX brakes though, maybe in the future.