Hey chaps,
Advice needed. (Please!!)
So the story goes as follows...
I set up the wife's beautiful new bike with a set of slicks on wheels with Hopes hubs and cleansweep G2 rotors so that she could choose from offroad or onroad wheelset. The Hope hubs have a different rotor alignment to the XT hub that was stock so I stuck really thin stainless washers between the rotor mounts and the rotors to push the rotor proud just a little - all was smooth. When whe went back to the XT hub with formula rotor the brakes were rubbing all of the time and alignment wouldn't fix it.
Today I took a closer look and it was just that the gap between pads was too narrow. Perhaps the avid rotors are thinner than the formula ones? however I couldn't force them apart no matter how hard I tried.
So I borrowed a bleed kit and tried to bleed the brakes, so as to set them up again. Now the problem I had was that I couldn't run the fluid from the caliper end to the lever. It just seemed to have a blockage I tried over and over, different ways (trying to push from lever, pull from caliper, push from the caliper with suction at the lever etc.) and eventually got a bit of movement of fluid but only a very small amount and then it stopped again. I tried to force it a bit harder and ended up blowing off the hose from the syringe and spraying fluid everywhere (that gives you an idea of how much pressure I was using but still now flow from one end of the hose to the other.
Can anybody out there tell what could be wrong with this brake or advise how I could sort things out. I thought bleeding brakes was easy - take off the two bleed screws, attach syringes of fluid and pump it back and forth till no air bubbles. Why in this case does it not flow? The brakes were working perfectly well before I put the slicks on and then off again! after closing off the bleed screws the lever does squeeze the pads a little but not enough to brake since the lines now have air in them. Am I missing something obvious?
Now the wife is mad because she can't ride this weekend...
Thanks.
Panzer
When moving the fluid from the caliper to the lever did you have the lever closed?
Instructions are here: http://www.formula-brake.com/en/bikes/rx
Thanks. No I just left the lever as it was. I'll see if this sorts it...
Well holding the lever down with elastic bands didn't help but I have got it fixed now (I think - won't be confident until after a few rides). I took off the banjo bolt from the caliper had a look at the seals (one was split) refitted it putting the split one together again (will need to order new and replace them) maybe this split seal had blocked the hose? whatever it was, I still couldn't flush all the way through. So with the hose running vertical I spent a while forcing forward and back (as hard as I dare without blowing the hose again), till no bubbles and tadda seems to be nice and responsive once more.
Not really sure if this is normal behaviour with Formula but if it works then I'll stick with it.
Thanks,
Panzer
This happens with quite a few of them.If you apply a little pressure at the calliper end and pull the lever on and off slowly then you should be able to get it all flowing nicely.Once you can flush a few syringes of fresh fluid through it,start bleeding it the way Formula describe.