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  • Shimano brake lever problem
  • JonEdwards
    Free Member

    Noticed at the beginning of my ride today that there was some fuid visible around the innards of my XTR trail back brake lever. Didn’t think too much of it as the bike hasn’t been cleaned for a few rides.

    Anyhow, it started pulling back to the bars during the ride on an initial grab of the lever, but would harden up nicely on longer descents when on the brakes for a period of time. Until the lever jammed at fully pulled and stayed there. It released after a bit of faffing, but then kept jamming.

    Once home, I’ve stripped it down, cleaned it (it was filthy inside) and reassembled, to no great success. The master piston is jamming at full lever travel, and it doesn’t seem to want to take fuid from the resevoir meaning the pads aren’t resetting. I’ve bled it back and forth a few times – I can push fluid from the caliper up, but I can’t from the lever down.

    Any ideas? The seals on the master piston looked OK, although the lever end of the piston looked pretty scuffed up. I’m going to guess it is a seal though, but I don’t understand why it’s started sticking – it’s almost like one of the seals has swelled up.

    Anyone know if the master piston is identical to a Deore one? Tempted to try buying a deore lever for £19 and swapping the innards over, athough there’s a risk that there might be some lever body scoring internally.

    Thanks!

    doncorleoni
    Free Member

    Hard to tell if seals shot from visual inspection. To be honest I would just slap a deore lever on. No real difference in performance from XT at all. The bite adjust does sweet fa anyway and to be fair the tool less reach adjust is touched once and once you are happy it’s left alone.

    Having had x2 slx and x3 XT brakes and now deore, I will be sticking with deore.

    JonEdwards
    Free Member

    Bit of a bump for the weekday crowd.

    Using a deore lever would leave me with a different one each side, and that’s absolutely not on! Agree that it’s the cheap option though.

    I do actually use the reach and freestroke adjusters a fair bit as they don’t always compensate evenly for pad wear and I’m a bit fussy about my lever setup.

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Viewing 3 posts - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)

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