As well as Big Things like pistonless disc brakes and hydraulic road brakes (see below) Ashima like to sweat the little things. Here’s a disc brake mounting bracket with slightly slotted eyes – useful for precise positioning of disc calipers on hub gear and singlespeed bikes that have slotted drop outs.
And here’s the hydraulic road brake which may be of interest to cyclocross peeps too. You can more about this Dark Side stuff over on our sister site www.road.cc
We showed you the Ashima “pistonless” PCB disc brake at last year’s Zyro Open House. PCB stands for PanCake Brake by the way. Now it really is almost available (next month hopefully). The red pipe on the outside is where the fluid can move through – passing the fluid through this exterior pipe is principally to help keep the fluid cooler but a happy benefit is that the brake is really easy to bleed too.
It is kind of like a piston, except it’s not. Think of it as kind of like a bellows. Or as a piston with a seal between it and the caliper body. The pads are Shimano format.
And here’s the other end where you do the finger squeezing thing. The reach is adjustable from the front. The hose exits at an angle from the body (reminiscent of Magura) which makes for nicer cable routing and less “shifter clash”.
The view from the front – to give a better look at the reach adjuster thing and to give a better impression of the relative thinness of the brake body. The lever is flippable. Complete system weight inc. 180mm rotor and bracket is 300g. RRP £130.
Remember V-brakes? There are a few people who still prefer them for certain applications (intensely jey Euro racers mainly). Ashima weren’t happy with the bog standard tinny alloy noodles you get with V-brakes (that let filth in and induce cable drag etc) so they’ve invented these things to replace them.
And here’s it is in place. Now your fancy la-di-da braided outer cable runs all the way to the “noodle exit”, ensuring cleaner, crisper braking. Aren’t little things executed well brilliant? :)
Cable outer ferrules with ball-and-socket exhausts. Makes routing a whole lot more betterer on complex, tube-cramped full suspension bikes. And it also helps to reduce paintwork being rubbed to death by cabling.
The side-on view of the ferrule. It’s something anodised you can pimp your bike up with – which is all part of life’s rich tapestry isn’t it?
Continuing the “tricking it up” theme, Ashima’s colour coded “Air” rotors have proved to be extremely popular with bike tarts. Here’s the on-trend white colourway.
Comments (8)
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all very pretty.
pretty pointless too.
is that powerpoint slide like a spot the difference compo?
Is it that the little yellow bit has moved?
What do I win?
Pointless olly?
In what way?
I like the look of those colour coded air rotors.
I’ve spent time looking for some red ones before and can never seem to find any.
Those outer cable ferrules are what I want for my birthday. Which is coming up soon, you’ll all be happy to hear. And all the detailing on my bike is red…I’m easily pleased, no?
Regarding the Ashima tech drawing of the “pancake” brake – i think Wayne has either got his drawings plain wrong, or he’s trying to play a slight of hand trick so that competitor’s can’t directly pinch Ashima’s design from journo’s photos of his presentation!!!! :-)
One other thing that we were told by Ashima – that there hop up kits for different rotors are also a lot lighter than the competitors so the combined rotor and adaptor saving is something like 30% on an average brake – which is tons!
And the brake ferrule do da’s are actually very clever … zedbedboy I agree about the diagram!
ive had ashimas pCB xc brakes since 17/08/2010 the first set i.e the rear one blowout looked like the oil seal had gone were the red outer oil tube is ,this was two weeks after having them .
last week the rubber dust covers have come loose flapping around, and now i think the left piston seal in the lever body is going as there has been oil on the lever :-( , the thing is they are light, great as far is rub free ie the concept works fine but its the seals that are letting me down so will be taking them back to the shop for the second time to see what can be done as they cost me £240.00 at the time they shouldn’t have failed me twice in 8 months !!!!