Brakes – Hope or Shimano?

Want – 2 pot, powerful, light. XTR or Race X2 Evo?

I’ve currently got some 2008 braided hosed Hope M4’s and wonder if there’s about 1/2lb plus to be saved on upgrading the brakes. The M4’s would go onto my second bike which needs new ones anyway.
Might have a good deal on Shimano so XTR would be the choice there, but the Hope Race X2 are also damn light, probably as powerful as my current M4?
I’m about 12 stone so never drastically overheated M4’s except the steepest longest alpine descents. Think I’d be fine with the Hopes.
Will possibly go 200 front / 180 rear.
Want 2 pot because I’m crap with maintaining brake pistons – I can do bleeding but the effort of checking piston movement eludes me. I think only a third of my M4 pistons work at any one time.

Hope if you want something that looks nice and engineered.

Shimano if you want something that works.

XTR. Simple.

Shimano. The default first choice by a mile these days.

XT

XTR are just a nicer, slightly lighter version of the same. But for half the price, you could buy the XT and spend the money you save elsewhere on the bike for more of a weight saving.

Oh, and performance wise, they’re incredible!

Having no experience with Shimano for 10 years, brakes wise – I have to call it for Hope. As you’ll know Hopes are famous for their ‘feel’. Depends what you want them to feel like. You may even buy Shimano and regret it because you’re used to the feels of your lovely brakes!
Lastly, Hopes are the easiest brakes to bleed by far IMO.
Good luck.

Only drawback of Shimano is poor parts availability, so, personally I’d avoid XTR since a trivial part could fail once out of warranty and require a whole new lever or caliper. Not a big deal on XT or lower, more of a deal on XTR.

mboy – Member

XT Deore.

XTR XT are just a nicer, slightly lighter version of the same. But for half the price, you could buy the XT Deore and spend the money you save elsewhere on the bike for more of a weight saving.

Oh, and performance wise, they’re incredible!

Save even more money 🙂

Well both work very well, so it depends whether you care about buying British and whether you are happy with brakes being a disposable item. Sooner or later that all brake 🙂 but with Hope there is a much better chance that you’ll be able to fix them. With Shimano you are much more likely to toss them into a landfill and buy a new set.

Interesting.
Was checking this old post and thinking of going the other way:
http://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/should-i-get-some-xt-brakes

saw this quote, quoted by bwaarp too:
Another point worth noting if your a weight weenie, the XT’s were heavier than my old mono M4’s.

And the X2’s seem to have better feel than the on/off grabby shimanos.

Want 2 pot because I’m crap with maintaining brake pistons – I can do bleeding but the effort of checking piston movement eludes me. I think only a third of my M4 pistons work at any one time

Sounds to me like Shimano would be best for you

Formula The One 🙂

Tell you what that thread I mentioned up there is a cracking read – who knew you could get so passionate about brake manufacturers.

I’ve had various brakes and had various things go wrong, hopes are the only ones that didn’t go in the bin they went to my lbs , who are a hope service center for full rebuild and come back like New. As you can buy every little bit for them to be fixed

Just got back a hope m4 that was on a new to me bike that needed some tlc as had sticky pistons and I managed to make it worse trying to fiddle lol I got new pistons, all 4 and all the seals changed including lever and a fresh bleed all for just short of 24 quid 😉

Rose have got Magura M4s for £70 ish a pair.

I like the brick wall braking offered by all the current Deore-XTR brakes. Fit and forget.

Formula The One

LOL my old man sent his pair back to be serviced/repaired. Do you know how long it took the distributors to do it? Three months 👿

Overall: With Hope you’re getting quick service times when you want to send them back, good parts availability and good customer service. With the XT/SLX you’re saving a few quid and getting a brake system that produces just as much power and are possibly more reliable… but at the expense of parts availability and customer service. The XT’s/SLX produce their power quicker and have less modulation (some like grabbier brakes).

So do you want initially grabbier brakes, that are cheap enough (just about with the SLX brakes anyway) to throw away when they start to break down? Or do you want to spend more and get a slightly better performing brake that MAY need a little more servicing but will last better in the long run?

Also the Hopes can take good racing fluid like Motul 600 or Castrol SRF – if your into big long alpine descents these will do more for you than Shimano’s Icetech rotors ever will. Also the Hope’s feel MUCH better made with no rattling parts and are far more bling! If you like engineering, you will love them.

Yep firestarter, I sent my M4’s to Hope themselves for new pistons etc, but they forgot to send them back meaning I went to the alps brakeless…

That’s unusual for Hope…

Ha ha and I’d heard all the great customer service stories too!

XT is leading the decision now – I’ll keep you all fully updated.

Deore from Rose and I haven’t looked back, used loads of others previouosly and nothing compares to feel and reliability of the Deores.

Shimano everytime for me. Blitz the Alps and never ever had to send them away anywhere to be fixed or for parts replaced because I’ve never needed too.

Exactly how long have you had them for Coogan? 1 year, 2 years, 3 years? They will go eventually. My old man hasn’t had to do anything to a pair of Hope Mini’s on his commuter/XC bike for the past 5/6 years.

Having used both XTR and Hope X2 recently the XTR get my vote, they seem more powerful and I like the on/off breaking rather than the, in my opinion, more vague feel of the Hopes.

They aren’t more powerful though, they’re just grabbier initially.

That’s where opinion comes in, where I hate the on/off feel because it’s much harder to feather Shimano brakes in loose or wet conditions without losing traction.

Missed your big post bwarrp – the spares/parts is something I do like about hope for sure.

Test ride on friends bikes or something might be in order. See how I like the feel of shimano.

bwaarp – Member

LOL my old man sent his pair back to be serviced/repaired. Do you know how long it took the distributors to do it? Three months

When was that? You know they changed distributors? There was a downtime inbetween as stock and obligations were transferred.

I picked up a pair of X2 Evos to replace a set of 2012 XTs on my Soul that leaked from new, the X2s took a bit of fiddling to get them to feel like Shimano (I’m used to Saints), but now thet they’re bedded in, I’m delighted with them. Really don’t think you can go wrong with either.

As for which Shimano XTR if lightness is important, XT if you want ugly fake chrome, SLX for everything XT does in a cheaper, less garish package, and I haven#t tried Deore ones myself, but from the sounds of above, they’re the same again but cheaper.

I run Hope and think they are a great set of brakes, got them on two of my bikes and easy to maintain as well as look good….

Yeah Dirtbiker, it’s all down to personal preference and whether you want to service them easily. At the end of the day I like more modulation, I like to service my own brakes, I like nice blingy things and I also have a habbit of physically damaging brakes during crashes – so I went with Hope’s as say… if I bent a lever…I can get that for 16.99 as opposed to 45 quid for a whole new Shimano lever + master cylinder.

Remember the X2 system is a lot lighter than XT and slightly above or below (can’t remeber) XTR weights whilst being cheaper than the latter.

One of the German sites has a decent list of Shimano spares… bike-components, maybe

When was that? You know they changed distributors? There was a downtime inbetween as stock and obligations were transferred.

The summer just gone, he sent them at the beginning of August.

Think that’s about right- I was waiting for ages for a part I’d broken, thought it was earlier in the year but maybe not. Spares now available (and largely in stock) through CRC.

Had a set of old Saints for over fours years and have SLX’s that are about 3 years old now and perfectly fine.

It was beyond our ability to fix them with spare parts from CRC Northwind…they needed to go back. They’d had the usual new seals and were still acting funny. I think something really major had gone wrong with the master cylinder.

They were the old 09 ones that they had to redesign due to reliability issues.

Yah, tbh even for a fanboy like me there’s no defending that one, they were pish.

(think you can tell a lot from the design cycle… Oros, virtually unchanged since I think 2006, still for sale. The One, I think launched in 2008, completely redesigned by 2010.)

Hope for feel and serviceability cat get why people like massive on off powered brakes. It’s rare I want to lock a wheel and the hope modulation on the m4s is great. Power when needed but feel and progression to that point. And you can service them.

The Shimanos aren’t on off though- I was riding a bike with 2012 Saints and 203mm rotors at the weekend, still perfectly usable, not at all on/off.

I thought they felt absolutely horrible tbh but that’s just taste

I totally agree with ST mag’s review of SLX M666 brakes. I used them heavily in Liguria! Amazing performance. If they turn out to be as reliable as my old M525s (years of trouble free use and bled once) that would make them the perfect brake IMO. Whereas everyone I know who uses Hope brakes says they are great but then complains they arent working properly now and need bleeding again. At least Hope have good spares when you need them. But why are their brakes so seemingly unreliable?

The Shimanos aren’t on off though- I was riding a bike with 2012 Saints and 203mm rotors at the weekend, still perfectly usable, not at all on/off.

I thought they felt absolutely horrible tbh but that’s just taste

They’re 4 pots though, part of the reason for going to 4 pots is to increase modulation as well as power.

Whereas everyone I know who uses Hope brakes says they are great but then complains they arent working properly now and need bleeding again. At least Hope have good spares when you need them. But why are their brakes so seemingly unreliable?

I’ve had about 4 pairs of Hopes, C2’s , Minis, M4’s and V2s. My brother was a sponsored downhiller at one point and ran Hopes from C2s all the way through to M6’s and V2s and my old man pretty much ran the same. So we’ve had well over a dozen sets of Hopes. Never had a problem with reliability, ever.

You need to bleed Hopes at least once a year because they use hydroscopic synthetic fluid that eventually loses it’s heat resistance, whilst Shimono’s use inferior but longer lasting Mineral oil.

bwaarp – Member

They’re 4 pots though, part of the reason for going to 4 pots is to increase modulation as well as power.

Ah come on now, the entire reason for going 4-pot is for marketing. Same as 6-pots on motorbikes 😉 But, the same applies to all the current Shimanos I’ve used- there’s no lack of control, if they’re on/off it’s because the rider has on/off hands, same as any other brake.

Not my preference for feel, tbh, but that’s just taste- most folks seem to prefer it.