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I'm running some Hayes Stroker Trail brakes, with a 180 mm front and 160mm rear, on a 7" Kona with a set of Vanilla 36's. Am thinking of upgrading the brakes for a bit more power and doing some DH / Uplifts / Alps riding with it.
Should I just upgrade the rotors to 200mm front / rear or is it worth upgrading the brakes as well? I'm after something that would cope better with long descents, as earleir this year suffered with a lot of fade on the Hayes on long descents.
Cheers for the advice
Bigger disks for the Alps would help, some of the trails were hard to stay off the brakes , super steep and if you let off you went too fast for the trail, I had a guide and he said don't drag the brakes, just nail them when you need them, was very scary but fun, it was pucker / grin pucker /grin... 😀 I used Code 5's and they were good, but I went through 3 sets of pads over the holiday, so take a spare sets with you.
hope v2 for the win
I ran 200 front, 180 rear on the stroker trails in the Alps with no fade.
Having said that though, I just got a set of Hope V2's, and they are a different league.
Depends on budget versus shiny new brakes I suppose 😀
iI've ridden 160s in th Alps no worries.
Cheers for the replies.
@thv3, don't mind spending cash, it's more about value for money.
Rotor upgrades for my Hayes would be around £50-£85, incl the adaptors and new brakes may be in the £250 region. Partly my question was about would I get a significant upgrade in performance for this.
@Jeffus, yep - spare pads always good particularly with (French) Alps prices
I didn't get on with Stroker Trails - decent stopping power but the initial bite is grabby and too on/off.
I replaced them with Formula RX - better stopping power but also can be modulated really well. I got mine new RX from France inc Rotors and adapters for about £180 on Ebay.
If I'd had the fund at the time I would probably had gone for the 2011 Formula The One's but haven't regretted buying the RX at all. The same French seller has The One's for around £300.
If your are after a brake upgrade then Saint M810s are pretty awesome, bags of controllable power
IME anything is better than Hayes Stroker Trails. Horribly grabby and no modulation. A good compromise between weight and performance would be Hope Tech M4. My Tech X2's have more than enough power for the biggest descents in the UK. Tech M4's not that much heavier but should stop you like a brick wall
M4's feel little better than X2's, and are I believe not worth the cost or the weight. V2's on the other hand are a quantum leap; epic brakes.