Has any one ever had any success repairing an XT M775 brake lever? Mine seems to be leaking from the master cylinder. As usual no spares listed but it can only be an o ring or square cut seal that’s faulty. Cheers.

Should have bought Hope brakes…
Thought I would reverse the usual “should have got Shimano”

So which part is leaking? you can buy all the sub-asseblies, the parts breakdown is here

Err no spares or seals available. Do you see any master cylinder seals in there?
Sadly nothing like what you need is available. I had to bin a M765 caliper as one of the seals was bubbling a little.

It does seem pants that basically with Shimano you just end up buying a whole new unit. Calipers for example cannot be serviced – shite.

My mate had to buy complete new Saints just because he needed a seal service.

Ive bought a left and right hand set of masters complete with levers just because while in the Alps, should I bust a leaver Im buggered.

If Hope made brakes as powerfull as my Saint 4pots Id have bought Hopes.

In your case your left searching the bay of fleas, or looking for a cheap set on CRC / Wiggle.

As I suspected, just find it really frustrating that the whole lever assembly has to be junked for what is probably just a faulty o ring.
And yes I should have bought Hope but I got the whole system for less than half what Hope would’ve cost.
Lasted 2 years of fairly intensive use.
Thanks for replies

I find the modular nature of shimano kit more time efficient.

In the 4 years i owned my Mono Mini brakes i spent a lot of time swearing at them.
I have hands like shovels so pissing around with circlips and seals is low on my list of favourite jobs.

TJ & the Shimano haters to the thread!

I remember a guy here saying you could get all the spares, I can’t remember how tho.

I remember a guy here saying you could get all the spares, I can’t remember how tho
Hope’ll knock you some up probly

Can’t fault the performance of the brakes just think in these days of recycling it just seems a real waste to have to bin a brake for what could be a 1p o-ring. Obviously they do it to increase their profits but doesn’t exactly encourage brand loyalty.

I don’t know if it’s Shimano’s decision or Madison’s.

Shimano spares are otherwise pretty good.

Maybe the design is genuinely not serviceable, when I’ve replaced it I’ll investigate, see if there is anything you can service.

Of course you can change the seals. Unless its been riveted together.

Its just a part of the design philosophy – replace not repair so stuff is not made to be repaired.

Plenty more examples of this – the only spares for an alfine hub for example is an entire new cluster – despite the fact it can be dissembled into several sub assemblies fairly easily

In my experience at work you can take anything apart it’s the getting it all back together in working condition thats the tricky bit. We repair automotive brake calipers so have access to all the required tools and seals etc I shall report my findings but it doesn’t look like it comes apart very easily.

If it was mine I’d just take it to bits and see if the seals are specific ie.Specially moulded rubber or just generic O rings or similar.

I have had the levers off my old Deore brakes in bits before now,cannot remember what the seals were like though.

worst case scenario you buy a new lever and have the old one for spares(bar the seals)

This is why I’m going hope with my next purchase. They may not be quite as powerful or light but they will last for a long time. Smart buying IMHO.
Shimano are very nice but I’d expect a cost saving for the disposable nature of the brakes.

unovolo that’s exactly the conclusion i have come to. I’ll get another lever then i’ll take it to bits.

I am fairly sure the shimano seals are bespoke – in the case of the calipers anyway. deliberately so so folk cannot repair.

I am sure its teaching you tosuck eggs but remeber its mineral oil not dot 🙂

Hopefully this will help:

http://www.petracycles.co.uk/shimano.php

T J any reminders gladly received.
Only one way to find out, when I’ve replaced the lever i’ll take it to bits.

For the shimano haters, as a comparison, how do shimano fare against other foreign large scale manufacturers of equivalent parts?

So Hope do well on warranty and spares (we all know this because their stuff seems to break a fair bit), but they distribute themselves, so it’s pretty easy for them to send out spares rather than get a distributor to hold spares and do so). A true test (in comparison with shimano) would be how they do abroad – which we know nothing about.

Lots of other wee UK manufacturers fall precisely into this category.

Sram – is their spares situation any better or worse than Shimano?

Magura? Formula?

Campag? – You used to be able to get everything but it was ****ing expensive, but I understand the UK spares supply route is now different (i.e. not Mercian)

Madison stock IMO/E a HUGE number of shimano spares, given the vast number of shimano products available. We have no idea if this due to intentional designer obselesence on the the part of shimano, or Madison not wanting to have another warehouse full of spares they may still have in 20 years, or something else.

It’s true that shimano (and sram, Hope, Campag and many others) do change stuff frequently for no performance benefit (as well as introducing many benefits that no small manufacturer could have done – SPD, indexing etc). To blame them alone for that is naive IMO – many consumers want to be sold the newest thing…not just at the lower end but look at the no. of folk on here who are buying newer/more expensive kit that genuinely has no benefit to them whatsoever.

There almost endeth my musings…it’s simply not as simple as HOPE = GOOD, SHIMANO = BAD, and, if I dare, THE WORLD IS SHADES OF GREY AND NOT BLACK AND WHITE[/b].