OK, I’m a lazy mechanic and like everything simple and easy, I am also a cheapskate and like to do things on a very low budget (due to having to pay for shit like mortgage/food/car/etc).

I want to upgrade from V brakes to disc and like the apparent simplicity of maintenance of cable and ease of trailside repair etc.

If I am going cable – which onces are the best on a tight budget? And, are there any to avoid?

Thanks.

avids are sometimes cheap

Dont disregard cheaper hydraulic ones My Deore ones are 8 years old and all I do is change the pads ,thats it nothing else if they do get spongy I ziptie the levers back overnight and force the air out that way

Agree with edric, deores are pretty good vfm but if you go mechanical for simplicity then the Avid cables have always been good

bb5 good, bb7 better –

Avid BB7s are really good – I put some on my GF’s bike and I don’t like to admit it but they are perfectly decent compared to my fancy shmancy Formula The Ones (nowhere near as powerful but they work well).

You do have to adjust them reasonably often as the pads wear down but it’s no hassle at all.

If you’re insistent on cable discs, may I suggest you avoid Promax at all costs- the most hated brake in our workshop at the moment, rotors always bent in lots of places, slop in the pivots, pads that don’t sit parallel with each other, very weak return springs, and levers that come to the bars unless you spend absolutely ages bodging a cure for the above, and only another 150 bikes with them waiting in the storeroom 😥

Cheers guys.
Forgot to say that they are going on my Singlespeed and I ride cross country almost exclusively – not into fast downhill. So performance sounds like it should be ok.

BB7’s on my rigid 29er.

They came on it and ey were earmarked for an eventual upgrade but to be honest, I’m petty impressed by them.

You can wind each pad in or out by hand, individually ! They’re plenty powerful enough IMO and taking the bike around the Monkey Trail at Cannock (the only proper trail the rigid 29er has done so far) they’re more than up to the job and never left me wanting more.

BB5’s on my Kona Ute. Not quite one finger Elixir type braking, but no issues stopping a 40lb bike with 150kg of me & two kids on board. Given the choice though, for off road, I’d go hydraulic.

Used hydraulics for a while (Hopes), switched to BB7’s as I was sick of the faff. Never looked back.

BB7’s = da shizzle.

BB7s and speed dial levers have one big advantage over hydros – you can run a bigger pad/rotor gap and still have one finger braking.

Get decent fully sealed cables for low maintenance and good feel and power – I use gore ride-ons.

Avid BB-7 will serve you very well. 160mm front 140mm rear should work well for your needs – use this set up on my commuter/tourer without issue and have not been found wanting in the braking department.

Complete front and rear set including levers, 160mm discs and cables can be had on Ebay for £70ish.

They use the same pads as the Avid Juicy brakes so are easy to find – BB-5 uses different and unique pads.

Cheap BB5’s on ebay here

or BB&’s from the same place

I got a set from them a couple of months ago. Arrived in 4 days with free postage. You can’t really argue with that

I’ve not looked recently but I’ve had a set of hydraulics for about £50 from the likes of rose.

Cables can be excellent, but the right pair of hydaulics will require much less maintenence and attention. Avoid avid hydaulics, they feel bizzare, the pads are a **** to change and they are a bit of a fiddle to bleed. Hopes are blingy, and excellent when you get a good pair, but hit and miss as to whether your pair work or not (ime). Shimanos are excellent all over. Good vfm, easy and clean to bleed should you ever need to. The fluid isnt hydrophillic either, so they dont absorb water like others,so require bleeding very rarely. Properly fit and forget. Remember with cables you need to maintain the cable, the moving parts of the caliper, and adjust for pad wear regularly. None of which you get on hydraulics. Not trying to sell you hydraulics, just saying dont dismiss them.

When I ran cable discs (BB7’s), they were much more faff to keep well maintained and running sweet than hydraulics. They were OK to begin with, but once they start to get a little bit of wear in the mechanism, they are a pain.

The real issue for me was the need to manually compensate for pad wear. One particularly wet peak district ride, descending off Kinder, the rear pad wore quickly to the point of the lever coming back to the bars. No more back brake. So, hauled on the front to stop and adjust. By the time I was slowing down, the front lever was back to the bars, and I only just came to a standstill. Once stopped and pads adjusted, they were fine again, but come the bottom of the hill, they needed adjusting again.

You may consider them simple in that you can see what’s going on, but I do find them a pain. Crude aswell – what with bending the disc over to contact the non-moving pad, or running the static pad so close to the disc then anything other than perfectly dry conditions caused crap to rub.

Deore M596 would be a much better option IMO.

Had nothing but goodness from my BB7s on my tourer, happily stopped a bike laden with 90 kilos of me plus 40 kilos of gear from over 40mph. Haven’t had any reliability issues either.

I used to have a similar view before I got disc brakes.
Not possible to do trail side maintenance if things go wrong.

However, I’ve since found that they are more reliable than cable discs once set up and just haven’t gone wrong.
There is no cable to stretch and have to adjust they just work and when pads go there’s no additional adjustments bar pushing the pistons back a bit.

Cheap hydrolics all the way if money is tight.

Cable vs Hydraulic arquements remind me of a sign I saw in a tattoo parlour
‘What’s the difference between people with tattoos and people without?
People with tattoos don’t care if you do or do not have a tattoo.’

People with hydraulic brakes seem really narked that people use cable discs.

I like my BB7. Not really a faff and I don’t think I’ve had to bother with pad adjustment for ages.

No cable stretch happens if you use decent cables…

It is the pad/rotor gap issue that would stop me going hydro again – the only ones that might tempt me atm is the shimano hydrowave system as I believe that has a larger gap, but I also hear that they aren’t easy to work on, or get spares, or something like that.

I ran BB7’s on my various 29ers as a budget braking system while my 26er was pimped out with Hope, budgeted with SLX and then pimped again with Magura. I found myself spending far too much time wishing that I could adjust the bite point of the hopes so bought SLX as they apparently had more modulation. Then spent too much time faffing when the calipers failed after 6 months leaking oil on the rotors. Magura were the closest I got to bite adjustment and modulation but they ran at something like 0.01 mm away from the disc, so they always rubbed, especially in winter, which aggravated me. The time that the BB7’s were on the 29er all I ever did was occasionally adjust the pads and then replace them when they were worn out. I now have BB7’s on both bikes and I think the main selling point for me is that I like having the levers close to the bars when they bite. I found hydros hard to setup like that without spending silly money like I did on the Maguras.

Fab info folks, much appreciated.
Looks very much like I will be purchasing a set or two of BB7s.
Thanks for the links too.
Cheers, Paul.

If you buy from ebay take note that some sets come with G2 or G3 rotors and some with the cheaper and nastier roundagons, which you don’t want.

I can confirm the £70 set linked to come with G3.