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Fitted some Tektro Gemini HD M535 brakes at the weekend. The Tektro olive is the small silver diameter one and I manged to drop it and could not find again. So I removed the barb and fitted a standard copper Shimano olive and reinserted the Tektro barb and nipped it up. Completed a full system bleed, all seemed fine. I cable tied the brake level to the bar over night and it was pretty much the same, just a very very minor amount of spongey feel in the morning, which I attribute to some microbubble working their way up to the reservoir. Safe to use, or would you order the Tektro olive and redo ? I assume if it's not sealed correctly you would tell straight away with oil leaking from the brake connection and the lever would be on the bar in the morning.
I've got a mix and match of Shimano and Sram fittings across my shimano and sram brakes with no issues.
When you say small, do you mean tektro hose is a smaller diameter? If it is then I'd probably not trust it. If it's just shorter then I'd not worry about it unless there was some special profile to the olives (and even so SRAM/Shimano seems to seal up well despite having a step on the olive). Logically if they'll work with 3rd party hoses then they should work with each other.
Disclaimer: You might die.
Just spoke to Tektro technical team. There are two types: silver for 5mm internal diameter hosing and brass for 5.5mm. They said swap it out for the Tektro as the Shimano olive is larger diameter. Ordered the right part…. Not worth the risk
Personally I like the fact they didn't just tell you to use the Tektro part, they actually gave you an explanation why. That's good customer support there.
Because the olive gets crushed as everything gets done up it will probably be fine but on brakes I always err on the side of things being correct.
I fitted some ancient shimano levers to my son's Tektro Orion and didn't change the olives and it all went on fine and has been trouble free for at least a year.
The short answer is it does work, as proven by the overnight cable ties proving the system is not leaking.... but I started having nagging doubts and visions of bombing down a hill and the lever pulling to the bar one day 🙁 For a few quid it's not worth the risk. Didn't know that Tektro brake hoses are a different diameter to Shimano.
People who've looked into hose sizing have come up with some tentative sizes which may, or may not, be correct:
(ID=inner diameter, OD=outer diameter)
- Shimano (BH90) + Avid + Formula + Sram:
- ID: 2.1mm , OD: 5mm
- Shimano (BH59) + Magura MT:
- ID: 2.3mm , OD: 5mm
- Tektro/Hayes/Promax:
- ID: 2.5mm, OD: 5.4-5.5mm