Hi, just got myself a new bike. Whoop! Nice buying a complete bike for a change.

Anyhoo – its got XT brakes on it. Have been using Hope tech M4s and V2s on other main bikes for years, plus various maguras, Hayes, shimano cable discs etc on less used machines.

**** me those XTs stop you fast!

The difference is so dramatic, and so reliable, compared to any other brake used, that I can’t help but feel it’ll change the way I ride.

Some big mountain tests coming up, interested to see if there is any fade. If not, bloody hell these are the absolute business.

Lovely short, fast, light lever feel, ludicrous power. Love it!

Well, it’ll certainly change the way I brake, thats for sure… 😀

It’s very much an individual preference thing. Some folk like the “progressive” feel of the Hopes, but that results in long lever travel. Others prefer the more “on/off” action of Shimano, though others seem to struggle with that claiming they have no “feel”. Neither is right or wrong.

FWIW, I tend to over-fill my Shimano brakes so that there is next to no lever travel.

kevin, what bike did you get
i have ZEEs and XTs on mine and they are both superb, if you are impressed with XTs then you will like the extra power of the Zees

Love my Xts but noticed that the feel, lever throw, and power dropped drastically over time. A new set of pads put it right back up there, although the old pads were less than half worn and hadn’t done vast mileage.

It’s easy to modulate shimanos, just pull less hard.

😆

ah yes … modulation … It’s all about your brain telling your finger
how hard to pull the lever … 😉

got slx on my tinbred at the mo and have to say I’m hard pushed to tell
the difference (other than weight ?) between xt and slx – both are superb.

Lovely aren’t they.

I know that I dragged my X2 and M4 brakes whereas I don’t now.

glasgowdan – Member

It’s easy to modulate shimanos, just pull less hard.

This!

New brakes are always better than old brakes. You can’t draw any conclusions comparing them.

I got a new set of Hope X2s on a new build bike. Felt way better than my 2 year old X2s on my other bike.

My last session at Cwmcarn saw me totally lose braking on my X2 despite recent fluid and pads. I’d never pushed it as hard before.

Am thinking of a set of XT/SLXs 203/180 in the summer as my sets of Shimanos on my other bikes seem to be sooooo reliable.

Hopefully there’ll be some good deals coming up with the new sets in the shops soon.

Hope X2’s…where to start 😕

I love Hope kit. My current Orange Five is kitted out with a Hope BB, headset, seat tube QR, hubs and floating rotors. I like the design of their kit and I like the fact it’s homegrown. Until last week, I also had a set of X2’s fitted.

Now in all fairness these brakes were bought around 6yrs ago and have worked pretty much flawlessly. Except that 2-3yrs years back the rear failed completely when the brake fluid punched a hole through the rear caliper. At the time, I returned both calipers to Hope who immediately replaced them, (even though they were out of warranty), citing ‘corrosion’ as the reason for failure.

Fast forward to a week ago and I was in touch with the warranty department again, this time I had found that my rear brake lever was spongy and on closer examination,figured the problem was down to the reach adjuster screw having ‘mushroomed / flattened out’ and wasn’t giving me the full amount of travel adjustment. Again, the exceptional service from Hope meant that I had free replacement screws in the post within a couple of days. Brilliant service again.

I replaced the reach adjustment screws, but that didn’t fix the problem, so I then decided it was time for a re-bleed. That’s when I spotted the small fluid leak from the hose / master cylinder junction. Went to tighten this up to try and stop the leak and a 5mm split appeared down the length of the master cylinder. Pants!!

At this point I decided enough was enough and went online to buy a set of Shimano brakes, a brand I haven’t used since I was whizzing about on my 2001 model Patriot with Saint dinner plate brakes (awesome by the way).

At the start of the week, I went to remove my old Hopes and the first thing that happened was the bolt holding the rear caliper banjo in place sheared clean off, taking part of the caliper with it, the thing felt like it was made of paper it was that brittle. I then had a look at both calipers once they were off the bike and again they were showing significant levels of corrosion.

I admit that the split in the master cylinder was down to my cack handed attempts to stem the leak, but the caliper corrosion really worries me.

When I emailed the warranty department about this, I explained I wasn’t looking for a replacement, even though they offered to do so for a very reasonable £45. I was told that a single winter exposed to UK road salt could be enough to cause this level of damage. Now, I’d almost accept that if it wasn’t for the fact that I’m currently running a set of 12/13yr old Hope Mono Mini’s on my winter bike and a set of even older Hope Mini’s on my Tandem and the calipers on these look as good as new!! Three sets of brakes all treated the same, yet constant problems with the X2’s on a bike that doesn’t really get ridden that much in the winter.

I’m still going to buy Hope kit, just not their brakes as it’s come down to a trust issue now. I don’t understand why my X2’s failed and that worries me.

If you’ve got X2’s that are more than a couple of years old, just unscrew them from your frame and check the undersides for corrosion. My original calipers had gone all flaky and crumbly on the underside when they failed and the replacements were quite badly pitted and scarred when I took them off last week.

Think it’ll be Shimano for me from now on, although I fully expect my Mono’s and Mono Mini’s to outlast everything!!

C.

Shimano Xt brake pads do seem to lose effectiveness when you have worn through about 50% of the pad material.

Apart from that, they’re very good, I’ve never had any sort of fade with mine, and that includes use in the alps ,southern spain and uk uplift days where previous brakes (Hayes & avid – never tried hope) have faded significantly.

@Beagleboy,

Interesting stuf; will get a chance to do that in a week when I swap forks over. My X2s have been faultless until now but they weren’t confidence inspiring on that last ride.
They’ll do for a little while more; have had to buy a bit of kit for mm24 and I’m not going to be riding mini-DH (Driving Miss Daisy DH Style) for a few weeks due work.

My first Shimanos were the old four pot XTs. Great brakes and looked good too!

Must admit since transferring the Zees off the big bike onto the HT I’ve gone a lot faster. Braking is a non-event now just flick the lever and carry on riding

Merlin have XT M785 front and rear brakes for £99.95 at the moment.
Shouldn’t think they come with rotors but I’m almost tempted to get a set for when my SLX ones are knackered.

…since transferring the Zees off the big bike […] I’ve gone a lot faster. Braking is a non-event now…

So, taking the brakes off must be the answer 😆

(sorry)

Latest XT’s here. Lovely brakes.
Single finger bringing 110+kg of me and Orange 5 under perfect control at Bike Park Wales the other week. I’ve no doubt most hdro’s would haul me to a stop, but the amount of modulation from the really light action surprised me. Both ends for £100 you say…bargain.

Considering that in all cases, braking is limited by the ground and your tyres, i can’t really see how it makes any difference?

I fitted 203 Saints front & back on my Alps bike last year, and well, it stops just like it did before tbh. If the “internet” were to be believed, just looking at the brake lever should have resulted in this:

😆

New bikes always feel… mmmmmmmmmmm 😀

XT brakes are ace bits of kit though (Hope X2 here!!)

Got Hopes on the big bike and Shimano on the hardtail.

They stop me the same-ish but feel different-ish. Hope that helps.

Got 2012 Tech M4’s and last years XT’s on 2 bikes, ended up swapping over for a bit and tried the XT’s on the bigger bike. Not the leaps and bounds ahead that some on here seem to claim. Took a little but of time to get used to the different feel but just prefer the hopes. They are in need of some TLC but there is no way to cost effectively do hopes rebuild service from down here in Oz

Considering that in all cases, braking is limited by the ground and your tyres, i can’t really see how it makes any difference?

🙄

stevomcd Hope that helps

Shimano it did.

😉

Can’t say I can tell any power differences between the X2’s and our Deores. One has a softer initial feel (the hopes) but that’s it.

And in terms of reliability, all the Hopes I’ve had have been great (except for the old C2’s). What happens with Hopes is that most people leave them on their bike for 6 years, don’t bleed them, don’t service them and then when they put a set of 50 quid shimanos on they decide that they are amazing. They are great for the money, but they don’t offer more braking power than Hopes. Shimanos give as much power as a set of X2’s and my old V2’s were wildly more powerful than our Shimanos to the point that I actually thought they modulated better than the V2s.

I’ve been researching a lot into Icetech rotors as I want a set of brakes for Alpine duties and I’ve decided against Shimanos, too many melted aluminium cores in the rotors. I’m going to go with V4’s, in terms of cooling there is no replacement for displacement and the V4 calipers are **** massive in comparison to the Zees so they should stay cooler.

http://www.vitalmtb.com/videos/member/Kelly-McGarry-Crashes-Hard-in-China,28917/iceman2058,94

….brake failure. 10 quid says the rotors went soft.

V4s with Hope floating rotors are utterly bomb-proof for Alps riding. Not a hint of fade. Rotors lasted way longer than my 2 colleague’s Icetech rotors as well.

Icetech is a completely retarded idea for more reasons than I can be bothered to list. Its sole purpose is so that people can point at it and go “look, it’s got 2 metals so it must be dead-good innit?”.

Considering that Stevo’s brakes absorb more energy in 1 week than mine do all year (quite flat is Northamptonshire…..) i’d say that’s ^^^^ a pretty decent endorsement 😉

I don’t think much of my XT brakes. Maybe I was expecting too much, but they always feel spongy. I’ve bled them several times, very thoroughly, and tried various pads, to no avail.

Not had Shimano mountain bike discs since the old XT 4-pot disc back in 2003; I’ve been on Avid for years as they either came on bikes, or I could get them cheap through shops I worked for.

I’ve had lots of different Avid brakes, some have been trouble free, others have been trouble and required warranty claims. My most recent warranty pair of Elixir 7s started to pack up, it was time for a change and many riders were recommending Shimano

Recently I bought some Shimano SLX brakes for a very low price, and am very impressed with the braking performance, the modulation is something I adjusted to very quickly, and they just seem very well manufactured like most Shimano kit.

Love my Xts but noticed that the feel, lever throw, and power dropped drastically over time. A new set of pads put it right back up there, although the old pads were less than half worn and hadn’t done vast mileage.

Exactly the same here. Pads literally lasted years on my Hope brakes, and they behaved exactly the same all the way down to metal-on-metal.

I Have bith shimano XT and various hopes ones

Very little difference in operation …good pads will make more of a difference IMHO…. though Shimano are more on off

I always say the same thing
Want them to work today by Shimano want them to work in 5 years buy Hope

No service kit available at all for Shimano

XTs are great, use then all the time and the only issues I have had is with the pads suddenly separating from the backing. Happened a few times now and is apparently a known issue with the pads. Onto my usual Rahox now and no issues. We don’t see problems with Shimano and Hope out here. Other brakes we often see issues. With the Shimano it’s just a case of replacing when it breaks rather than fixing.

If you’re using standard pads then aren’t you comparing sintered Hope against organic/resin Shimano?

Wouldn’t that change make most of the difference people are talking about? (Corroded calipers aside)

XTs are great, use then all the time and the only issues I have had is with the pads suddenly separating from the backing.

Well that’s just great!

Personally, almost total brake failure is something that has never occurred in the 20 odd years I/or people in my family have been using Hopes!

There’s no excuse for pads suddenly separating from their backing. “They’re great brakes, but they might actually kill you”.

Well….now I’m paranoid about using my Deores. Any recommendations for 3rd party pads (not superstar), Goodridge?

Starting to get the feeling Shimanos are cheap because they use monkey metal in the rotors, shite seals and shitty adhesives in the pads. So that those brakes that were brilliantly designed in the R&D department become watered down pieces of garbage when they hit the production line.

IME had 4 sets of Hope brakes. All have been crap. The first ones, I just put down to my bad luck, and persevered, however the last two failures were repetitive and annoying , with multiple seal failures. All were fixed by sending back to Hope via my (then) LBS, or race support, but a pain nonetheless.

They seem to have forgotten that you also need to fit shifters on a bar too, so the ergonomics of the lever is ridiculous.

Considering the price difference, and considering the performance of Shimano brakes, there is no way I would buy another set of Hope brakes.

Never had an issue with the older tech 2s and lever setup, the Tech 3’s seem to be shorter as well.

Not sold on Shimano reliability, seen so many Shimano’s with blown seals, melted rotors and now apparently pad failure is a “known issue”. Great for the price….. perform well initially, however they seem to disposable products and I can’t trust them for anything other than low intensity trail riding.

I guess there will always be people who have anomalous experiences with certain products though, just never had an issue with Hopes so I trust them. We battered them for years at national level downhill races with no issue.

Hope Tech levers, M4 silver rear, black/gold Mono M4 front, braided hoses and Saint/Zee finned pads filed to fit. The black/gold M4 caliper is a May 05, not sure on the silver one, but probably 07/08.

All 2nd hand kit, and all I have done is the occasional bleed and the pistons in the Tech master cylinders (£5 each at CRC). The RHS has a matchmaker for the XT shifter and I have no problems with the positioning. Bleeding is a <5 minute job per side.

If I was going to get new F&R brakes, I’d go XT , or Zee if feeling flush. Would prefer a set of E4 or V4 Tech 3 if they came u cheap 2nd hand. Wouldn’t touch Shimano 2nd hand for brakes.

I use my XT brakes quite a lot and definitely not for low intensity trail riding! No issues at all apart from with the shimano pads. We have had two sets drop the braking material this year. I use Rahox pads which I think are great. A quick google indicates that the issues with the shimano pads aren’t limited to me. The brakes are fantastic though, I get given a bike with another type of brakes and I chose to remove them and pay for my own XT brakes!

Is there a particular pad this has happened with Doug? I’ve the got the standard ones with the cooling fins in at the mo, but have ordered resins with fins for the Alps this summer. Hope I don’t have a pad de-lamination moment!