Right, bear with me here.

So i’ve got a Whyte t-130SX with BR615 brakes. A few months back i had to remove the hose and re-route it on an outer….then re-routed it back in the frame. The hose needed shortening a bit so i don’t have a lot to play with.

When i pull the brake on the standard front, there’s a distinct ‘flick’ on the lever, i guess you’d call it free play, where there’s no initial bite etc. I quite like it like that.

The rear that’s had a new barb/olive/bleed seem to not have that, it’s like a squidge rather than a flick 🙂 Don’t you just love these techincal terms 🙂

So, i’m going somewhere with this, honest 🙂

I watched the GBMN video on youtube today again and when he fits the Barb, he slides the olive over the top afterwards. I couldn’t do that. I had to use another Barb after trimming an inch off, slide the olive on first and fit the barb while the olive was in place just inside the edge of the cable.

I’m wondering if i had an incompatible barb/olive and if this could be the potential issue  you rekon ? Should the olive slide over the barb easily as per video ?

Would that bring the problem i’m experiencing potentially ?  I don’t want to go at it again because if i trim too much more i’m going to end up with the hose being too short and would need plan B which i guess is a replacement hose, which seems excessive.

I’ve bled it several times, both at the caliper end and the reservoir end and i’m 100% certain there’s no bubbles in there giving it the wrong feeling… So it’s something else… Only thing i can think of is either the olive/barb combination or the amount i tightened the thread/nut when installing.

Watching this other Vid, he does it the same way as me, but i rekon i tightend mine a LOT more than 5-7Nm.

Very much doubt the olive and barb can affect lever feel, they’re completely static, just a seal. They either work, or they fail, and if you’re not squirting mineral oil everywhere then they work. Same goes for the nut, if you overtightened it it might well fail later on, but it’s not going to affect how the brake feels until it does.

I have some BR615s by the way, which I’ve shortened and bled just fine, but I’m really not sure I know what you’re going on about with this flick thing, do you mean that they feel spongey when stopping, or just that the lever feels like it’s not returning right, or what?

Hard to describe, the return isn’t quite as fast I guess?

Might just be gunk in the lever? Squirt some IPA in there (isopropanol, not the beer), and give it a good old wiggle. The vid looks fine to me by the way so I don’t think you’re doing anything wrong if you followed that fully.

Rear = longer hose = more fluid = more friction = pistons take a tad longer to retract hence less back flick 🙂 I run shimanos on 5 bikes….  mix of slx zee xt, lever feel / return is subtly different on the rear brake on all setups. Rear brake is also more susceptible to “pump up” too. Try it…. Give a few sharp quick pulls of the front and the rear and you will notice the rear lever travel gets gradually less as more fluid is forced into the hose. The hose itself does actually expand a tad under pressure so more hose = more space for fluid.

I have had one issue with a deore lever swap out where I forced a barb in wonky which cut into the hose… A little bit of the plastic must have got stuck and caused the lever to feel a bit weird. Cut the barb out, chopped end of hose, fitted new olive and problem solved.