For the third time in 6 months, i have broken the left hand brake lever on my M8100 XT brakes, the first time the bike fell over after being leaned against a tree and on picking it up the lever had snapped, second time i had a slight off, nothing massive, i just kind of fell over, again the lever snapped, tonight i was going uphill and just lost traction on a slippy root, so foot down and handlebars resting on the side of the slope to the side, with that the lever pinged off again and watched it go up in the air then in front of me.
Honestly, i've been riding 20 years with disc brakes, longer with Vs, never ever had a lever break on me, now 3 in 6 months, it is a poor design on the M8100, they've basically created a weak spot where they've bent the aluminium into a pinch, and it's that exact spot that's where the lever has broken each time, i have M8000, they seem to have slightly thicker material, and i had the XTR M9100, which had even more substantial material at that point, think i'll be binning shimano brakes now and just getting some hopes, at least i know they make levers that can take more than just a scrape, and easily replaceable, i now await another month or longer to find the bloody lever, which nobody has, and shimano don't appear to care enough to manufacture in any number.
Yeah funnily enough one of my friends just broke a m8120 lever. Could be a recurring problem.
He says he's gonna glue it back on. Don't know how well that's gonna work.
It probably won't, i tried JB Weld the last time, and i mean a lot of it, basically doubling up on the lever, with a metal rod behind to try and give some support, it fell off in no time, unfortunately the bit where it breaks off means the stress from pulling the brake is quite harsh on that part, and it has pretty low strength for vertical or lateral forces.
Yeah these are definitely a bad design revision.
Guess what. It's from cost cutting.
Previous levers appear to be cast these newer ones are stamped and folded.
Poor form Shimano..
Hopefully they'll noticed the failure rate at some point and go back to the previous design.
I had same problem. Managed to bend it back this time. If it snaps to theres a company called Flo Motorsports that make a better design lever.
I will replace with this if it snaps instead of buying another poor design Shimano lever.
Is it worth blobbing a load of e.g JB Weld round the weak spot from new now you're aware it's a problem?
Did the JB weld thing on the last broken lever, it fell apart on the practice run, the problem is the bit where this lever fails is at the point where you're stressing the lever most during braking, i thought JB would work, i cleaned it all, used a very generous amount and even used a little metal rod behind the lever to try and give some strength.
Did think about buying the US levers last time, but at 100 or so quid i thought i'd give it a chance, now it's getting punted and V4s put on at the next available moment!
I've switched over to the older levers i had on the other bike, which are the M8000/M8100, they just look stronger than the 8120s, which really are just a terrible design, they've bent them to give strength horizontally to follow the lever pull, but there is absolutely no strength against vertical forces, which kind of happen now and again on mountain bikes!
I bent a lever on the last gen of XT brakes in a fairly mild crash.
I think most levers are made of cheese, with the possible exception of Hope.