Interbike 2014: Ashima’s new cable-hydro caliper

PCB gone, it’s now all PCD and heat-shedding pads

With the fascinating PanCake Brake (PCB) no longer in production, Taiwanese stoppists Ashima were showing a couple of new products at Interbike.  Most exciting was the Power-Cable-Dual caliper, a cable-actuated hydraulic model aimed at cross-country and road applications.

The PCD’s cable-actuated arm drives a compact master cylinder, which in turn uses mineral oil to drive pads to the rotor.  The cable arm’s orientation makes for steadily increasing leverage- not unlike a simpler, more gradual Servo-Wave mechanism.  As the caliper’s essentially a self-contained system, there should be no need to bleed on installation (and little after that) but performance should be more consistent than purely mechanical calipers.  The entire package is tidy and said to weigh 180g.

The company’s ISO Thermal disc pads shed heat along the same lines as Shimano and Kool Stop’s  latest, maintaining power on long descents and, it’s claimed, to improve performance in humid conditions.  As a bonus, the alloy backing plates/heat sinks are quite light- though no numbers were available.