Dear Mr Shimano,

I like your brakes. I have the XT ones on both my mountain bikes and 18 months ago I bought a road bike with the road versions. All the sets use the same pads so I can bulk buy. 🙂

The XT brakes have a hex head screw to hold in the pads (an older bike had SLX brakes which had a split pin). All good and easy to change.

Sunday night, I decided that the back brake on the road bike needs new pads. Easy job, I thought. For some inexplicable reason, the screw on the road brakes comes with a flat pan head with a slot instead of the hex head. Screw is well stuck so straight away the slot gets chewed up and can’t get it undone. 👿

My damaged screw remover had no space and central hole to work in as the head is so thin. Could not cut another slot because of the shape of the caliper.

Ended up riding my best bike to work on Monday. Monday night, cut the screw out very carefully and removed the pads. Then drilled out the screw from the other side. Cleaned up the caliper and fitted a new set of pads using the split pin. Works fine now.

Why fit the pan head slotted screw rather than the hex head?
Is it to save 0.001g?
I think this is the only slot screw on my bike.
God help anyone who needs to change it out on the road.

Cheers

Servo

God help anyone who needs to change it out on the road.

People carry spare brake pads on road rides? I don’t even carry an allen key!

Neither of mine were seized when i went to used them but if youve not touched them for a year of commuting it might be an issue. You can buy different pins if its an issue but more of my multi-tool have a flat than a 2.5 or 3mm allen key. Road bikes often have a flat screwdriver needed for mechs (prob why small tools have them) so perhaps they followed that idea?

People carry spare brake pads on road rides? I don’t even carry an allen key!

I take your point but you might be on a World Tour!

I had to change mine the other night and was annoyed by this! The first two screwdrivers I tried weren’t quite right and chewed up the head trying to get the screw to move. Finally managed to find a third screwdriver which was a perfect fit and got it undone. Would have been so much easier with a hex head, as the allen keys are always to hand.

You can buy hex ones if it really bothers you.

I think mine were hex from the start though.

Some XTR (965) calipers had them.
Whilst I’d prefer it to be a allen head rathan than a slot screw, its not caused me any major issues.
Having said that, I always make sure there a dab of anti seize on the screw threads. Do you do the same?

Pads have been on the bike since I got it. Changed the front ones about 6 months ago and the screw was OK but as mentioned above 18 months of commuting took its toll. Got the split pin in there now. Anti seize would have helped but I didn’t have a problem with the hex ones before.

The screw on the front brake on my commuter was seized. Asked the question on here and best advice was to hacksaw through the pad tabs, remove them then hacksaw through the pin at the opposite end to the head then remove using pliers or another gripping tool.

I replaced with allan head bolts.

My XTR M965 came with similarly stupid flat head retaining screws, I had the exact same issue, replaced them with split pins, Still working well…