Looking to upgrade the stopping power for a trip next month, I have some hardly used Zee brakes in the parts bin and was wondering if I could simply just change out the calipers keep the latest XT levers then bleed the system?

It’s a Pita internal cable routing on the rear so looking to minimise the faff… !

I’m wondering if the reservoir capacity and or the leverage ratio is much different if at all between the XT and Zee levers?

Anyone done this?

Not done that particular combo but mixed and matched various shimano levers and calipers in the past with no problems.

I run a Zee caliper on XT lever on the front of my bike, and a normal XT caliper on the back. Lever feel is the same, bit more power on the front for dragging me to a halt.

One of the things I really like about Shimano brakes is the cross compatibility.

Perhaps not relevant as different parts BFWIW, but i put some new-er (brand new but not most recent) XT levers on 2gen old saint calipers and they were rubbish. So much so I got rid and bought the new (at the time) XT set, which are ace.

Hmm, on one bike I’ve got M987 levers with calipers from a 2005 set of XTR flappy paddle brakes (M966 I think). They work fine.

Although not identical, there are a lot of good reports of running the M9020 trail XTR levers on Saint callipers. In fact a lot of EWS riders use that combo.

Thanks for the feedback guys, im going to give it a try…..

Update should anyone else want to try….. works absolutely fine, loads more power in the brakes as you would expect, with much less lever force required. Now ready for some hot dusty trail riding in Spain !

I run a saint caliper on xt lever. Works perfectly

Yeah, mixed and matched many deore/slx/xt combos here. I’ve even used a xt lever on a magura caliper from the spares box when my caliper seals failed and I had I-spec shifters. It was surprisingly good although I swapped a set of xtr onto it a few weeks later.

Does anyone know if the Zee calliper uses banjo bolts like the XT or the other type like Deore?

Zee is all banjo’d up.

No reason that the XT 785 lever (or SLX 675 lever for that matter) shouldn’t work just fine. The SLX is probably a better option if available as it doesn’t have the fail bite adjust screw to mess up your bleeds but still has the reach adjust knob…

I run this set up and works great. Only hassle is the banjos at the caliper end that come with the XTs need to be the longer Saint/Zee ones, so some faffing changing them over.

Saints/Zees are so worth it if you are somewhere with big hills and long descents

Reviving this on the back of my other thread about bigger brakes for alpine use.

I’ve got some xt and slx (785 and 675) levers kicking about with hoses…

If I ordered some See or Saint calipers would they have the same power as a standard 810 saint brake?

Can anyone link to the banjo I’ll need to connect them?

According to a shimano video the zee/saint levers push more fluid than the xt ones so you’ll have to pull more lever to get the same power.

What about the new xt caliper on the front page?

Can pick a see caliper up for about £40. If they are largely the same thing then it’s a big difference in cost.

You’ll need a different banjo bolt too, or at least I did.

Edit – I see someone already mentioned this, but the Zee banjo bolt is the short one
– the XT is the long version.

Look at this on eBay http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/172784894037
I used these to run zee calipers on slx 7000 levers

I run xt m8000 levers and zee calipers. It was a simple as having the correct banjo bolt as the longer, gold banjo isn’t required and is just a way of differentiating Saint from zee given the caliper is identical. The caliper requires the old, short, black banjo bolt rather than the long silver in the xt caliper. Night and day power increase with essentially the same lever feel and if you’ve already got the levers and hoses in place as simple as fitting the caliper with the shorter bolt to the existing hose and banjo and bleeding the system. The frankenbrake is alive

I run Zee levers on XT calipers….. 🤣

I’m running saint Calipers with Xtr trail levers. Works really well. Better modulation than straight saint set-up, but more total power than straight XTR.