Anyone have any experince with either of these? Currently using Oro K24’s.
Love the modulation but not so much the faffing. Want some advice before i drop £300 large on these?

Cheers

Which hayes?

yup – m4 (new version) massive breaking and good modulation.. no pump as of yet and no hand or arm ache – brill. Poss too much breaking for me as I am using them too much at the mo – esp the front with bad consequences – training myself to feather them 😉 had juicy 7 and mono’s before that. Some people have had proplems with the tech lever design and their shifter but have xt’s with windows removed with no problem! oh using 203mm floating rotors with braided hoses BTW.

As per foxy, I’ve come from Juicy’s and the difference is immense.

I’ve also removed the windows from my XT’s and moved them in between the brakes and the grips. 180 rear/203 front, floating with braided hoses – Wiggle was the best price I found.

Mono TechM4 things here, 180/160mm and they are brilliant. Had to change my shifters though

I’ve recently switched from Hayes Stroker Carbons to Hope M4s after the pad dropped out of a stroker and bent the post. Decided I didn’t want pads that were held in by crap springs and loaded from the bottom. The M4s are plenty powerful and there’s more feel than with the Stroker. I also like the additional adjustability of bite point.

Still not convinced by Hopes personally.

go for M4’s,theyre super powerful enough and look really bling….

i’ll beat wiggle! 😉

Shimano Saint’s or XT’s for me, far more reliable and the new 4 pot saints have to tried to believe the power, truely stunning. My mates XT’s on his meta 5 are amazing for an xc brake too!

Thnaks for all your input guys, seems that Hope get the vote?

Jim; The Hayes i was refering to were the Stroker, either Trail, Carbon or the new Gram?

Cycleworld Uk: I think i spoike to one of your colleagues today. Can you beat Merlin. £340 for 180 up front, 160 rear with braided hoses and floating rotors????

Another vote for tech M4 here. I’m running 203’s front andback withbraided hoses. Can’t fault them.

I love my M4’s, I really like the power and feel to them. No experience with the hayes brakes but I dislike the feel to most shimano brakes I’ve used (saints mainly)

I wouldn’t pay £300 for stroker trails or carbon, though you should be able to get them a good deal cheaper – I paid £100 for a full set of trails last year. They’ve got decent modulation and have been trouble free so pretty good value at that kind of price I reckon.

How do they compare to Formula The One’s?

coogan – Member
Still not convinced by Hopes personally.

well, with a pair of M4’s and a pair of M4 Mono’s, both of which are six years old, I’m pretty convinced. Mine have been pretty much untouched, the 4’s have been bled twice, the Monos once, and they’re still on the original pads. I’ve ridden bikes with Hayes, and I really didn’t like the feel, and they sounded like the soundtrack to Deliverance. Hope for me every time.

Got to be the monos, Hopes are the best brakes i’ve owned. I need to get me someore for my Heckler

Hopes Here as well!

No contest!

I’ve got Hayes Strokers Carbons – came with the bike – brake is plenty good…but if I were to be buying a new set of brakes it would be Hopes…

I’m not sure what people mean by feel or modulation? If you mean the lever squidges once the pads are in contact with the rotor then the Hayes have plenty of that…I prefer a much firmer brake feel though, but from what I can tell everyone is going for that elusive feeling of lever squidginess to ‘improve’ feel and modulation (although I’m personally not convinced – once the pads are on the rotor, it doesn’t matter how much harder your pull the lever – once they are on they are on).

Hopes get my vote…

I’m not sure what people mean by feel or modulation? If you mean the lever squidges once the pads are in contact with the rotor then the Hayes have plenty of that…I prefer a much firmer brake feel though, but from what I can tell everyone is going for that elusive feeling of lever squidginess to ‘improve’ feel and modulation (although I’m personally not convinced – once the pads are on the rotor, it doesn’t matter how much harder your pull the lever – once they are on they are on).

Sorry Dick I don’t agree. I know the term modulation is open to interprestation. A good example are some old deore’s I had with 160 rotors. V snatchy – either on or off really – obviously is you break harder then the force increases, more friction therefore slowing you down faster. So your term once they are on doesn’t matter how hard you pull on the lever is wrong. pad contact means just that contact, the harder your pull on the leaver….

Modulation is also dependant on the lineage of the piston stroke so if non-linear the lever with increase the piston travel further so the further increase in the lever goes the stronger the breaking force – thats my take on modulation FWIW

£320 for that spec…………

re; people taking the shifter windows off their XT shifter – what do you use to cover where the window was attached? or do you just leave is as it is?

cheers!

“Once they are on they are on”

That’s the problem with Hayes brakes the couple of times I have used them. To me, modulation is all about being able to adjust the amount of brake pressure by small amounts, feel how much brake you are using and whether either wheel is about to lock. The Hayes brakes were so on/off they dumped me several times on regular local descents that I would not normally worry about

mike_check

The later XT shifters have a cover plate attached to the window that you can screw in place to cover the hole. Net solution really.

theres a small cap that goes over the hole,or you get the hope single mount clamp…..£20 a pair…

Not having a pop CountZero, just never found them that great and had a set of the old black/gold M4s fail in the Alps few years back. Was back in the Alps last week and at the end of long rocky steep run. Three sets of brakes were boiled out of eight riders. They were all Hopes.

Hayes have the problem that the pistons can just rot and die, taking the entire caliper with them.

Hopes are nice and have a good feel to them, and the M4 is WAY more powerful than the strokers. I’d rather have the M4 than the stroker (though to be fair I’m a DHer and thus NEED that extra power). They have a much nicer and more powerful bleed system as well so they keep their power for longer