I have a spesh evo which has Avid X0 Trail World Cup brakes.

From day one the rear brake has been giving me bother. When the brake starts to bite it makes a horrendous noise and I have a heavy vibration through the frame all the way to the bars.

My LBs seem a bit lost on this. They have checked all bolts are tight on the brakes and the suspension pivots, they’ve changed the pads and sanded the rotor, they even changed the rear rotor to a hope one.

But its still doing it. Anyone had the same problem or any idea’s ? I’m going to take it in again tomorrow but would be good to have a few suggestions to put to them.

Thanks Gb

caliper alignment?

My thoughts too, whilst the washer system allows perfect alignment, there’s also a possibility of mis-alignment in three different planes.If the pads aren’t hitting the rotor perfectly square from every angle, and at the same time as each other, there’s a good chance that they’ll be noisy (and not as effective as they should be too).

The calliper is aligned ok. The lads I ride with reckon they need bleeding but as I said they’ve done it from new and the lever feels good and solid.

The mechanic at the shop did mention that one of the pistons was a little sticky but said it shouldn’t make a difference and to ride it and it should sort itself out. But it just seems to be getting worse.

Was a common problem on the Elixir brakes, which were the precursor to the X0, the fix was a g2 clean sweep rotor I think. Worth a quick Google around the issue I mentioned.

Just a quick few…

Have you changed pads?
Have you cleaned the rotor?
Have you realigned the caliper?
Have you reset the pistons?
Have you got a sticky piston?
Are all your rotor bolts torqued up?

Ricks

Sticky piston could be the cause… I doubt a bleed would help.

If they’re new, I’d send them to fisher under warranty.

Had this problem with a spesh carbon stumpy, made even worse by the carbon frame. No amount of alignment, cleaning, sanding, fiddling or sacrificing of virgins made the slightest improvement.
EVENTUALLY …. Sorted it by changing the rotor – as mentioned – and tried an old hope 160 i had kicking around..

Not as powerful but cured the notchy feel.

Edit – just reread and youve tried this – bon chance …..

Mines carbon to. Had a look at G2 rotor and it looks same as the hope one that they put on.

The shop thought it had something todo with the wavey avid rotor but there’s another lad round here with the same bike/brakes . He’s had no probs although his is a medium with a 160 rear where as mine is a large with a 180.

I’ve googled the problem and haven’t found anything so I thinking there going to have to go back under warranty.

I’ve had some noise issues with my Elixir 1s and have been on MTBR a bit.

There is a whole subforum on brakes called brake time.

I’ve been on this thread.

Are your brake pads coming in contact with the rotor spokes at all? If so, move the caliper out using washers to shim it if necessary until the brake pads only contact the rotor’s braking surface. This worked for me.

Some people have been putting zipties on the rotor spokes to dampen vibration; I haven’t tried that.

Some people have been putting zipties on the rotor spokes to dampen vibration

So, a poor solution to a problem that shouldn’t exist.

I’d warranty them back.

Sticky piston on an Avid brake, and in other news Pope still catholic (albeit retired)

From my experience of Avid, they do need pistons cleaning regularly to stop odd noises and dragging brakes. Pump piston out, clean round piston with cotton bud and brake fluid, push piston fully home with pad spreading lever thing, repeat until pistons not sticky and move evenly. Then repeat in a month or two’s time when it happens again.

I found getting the brakes good and hot every so often also helped.

Its an easy fix, take avid brakes. Throw in bin. Buy some Hopes! 😉

Admittedly that’s what I’ve ended up doing

These are only 7 rides old so not quite there si69jc but that’s what I did with the Elixir brakes that came on my last bike.

I thought I’d read in one of the mags that Avid had sorted out there S***
for 2013.

As said above these have done it from the first ride out so I think something ain’t right somewhere . Left the bike with the shop today and I think they’ll end up sending them back under warranty.

Typically the sun is out now and I’ve just sold my second bike 🙁

Can the LBS lend you a set of brakes from a demo bike? or do they have a set spare in the workshop not used?

They’d probably lent me a demo bike if I’d asked, I’m decorating the hallway at the mo so should get on with that really.

update , the shop tried everything

different rotors and sizes ,pads ,checked all the shock and linkages ect ,all to no avail . There last resort was to take an elixir brake off a demo bike and it was perfect.

They contacted spesh who weren’t interested and they said contact fisher who also weren’t .

The shop though kindly replaced front and rear at there cost. When the new ones arrived they noticed that the levers were slightly different. It turns out that spesh had used standard X0 levers with Xo trail callipers. They don’t know if this was the cause but all is now good with quite vibration free braking 🙂

Many thanks has to go to the cyclecentre Congleton for keeping this customer very happy.

They contacted spesh who weren’t interested and they said contact fisher who also weren’t .

^This sucks! No support from the brands for the shop.

It was good of the shop to do the right thing for you, though.