Cable actuated hydraulic disc brakes.

Hi all I’m looking at upgrading my winter/cx/gravel bike and the one area it lacks a little is in the braking, currently running mini v’s which are miles better than canti’s (IMO) but descending off the South Downs way can still be a little nervous.

Fortunately my frame and forks will accommodate disc callipers the biggest hurdle is the brake/shifter STI’s, going fully hydraulic is for the time being prohibitive due to cost, but will be addressed as I intend to buy a new gravel bike once I’ve finished funding my children’s education (another 3 years), so I’ll be needing disc brakes that can be operated via a cable, and from what i can gather the general consensus is that cable actuated hydraulic systems are a bit better than a straight cable operated system.

Any recommendations from the forum? I have seen quite a few on Aliexpress but was wondering if anyone has used any of them and can provide feedback.

Wheels will also be getting upgraded obviously but as swappable axle systems exist the wheelset will likely be kept and moved on to the new bike eventually, will also allow me to go tubeless.

Thanks.

I have Juin hybrid brakes – not sure of the exact model but I can’t tell the difference from fully hydraulic brakes in practice. I prefer them to the SRAM Rival I had on a previous bike.

Why do you want hydraulic cable pulled calipers?

If your moving from rim brakes, bb7s or spyres will feel amazing.

Having run these and hydraulic calipers theres not that much difference in performance, they only main advantage to me was the lack of maintenance with hydraulics.

With bb7s I was constantly faffing with them to prevent rotor rub but their performance and reliability was really good.

The bb7s have one piston that moves with the cable and the other side is static. The spyres move both pistons but I thought they felt a bit spongy compared to the bb7s.

A friend has just bought some shimano cable calipers and he says they are very good.

You can pick up bb7s 2nd hand on ebay for very little.

I’ve read in a few places that the proprietry Giant hybrid hydraulic system is fairly decent.

I know Shimano hydraulic brifter systems are silly expensive now, but have you looked at the costs of TRP Hylex hydraulics and then fitting bar end shifters?

I’m pretty happy with Juin R1s.

I’ve had BB7s and Spyres. Could never get BB7s to work the way I wanted them to. Spyres are good, but really sensitive to setup.

I had a Hope V-Twin system for a long time – partly for reasons of cost but partly because when I built the bike, I specifically wanted bar-top brake levers as well and at the time, that was the only solution.

Sold the V-Twin a while ago (to someone on here actually) but it was a really good and pretty neat solution. Hope don’t make them anymore (although they did do a full service and rebuild of my old one before I sold it) but you can sometimes pick them up on ebay. Worth a look.

I fitted a set of TRP cable hydraulics to my Genesis Vapour. I’d not bother next time, I found a set of good V- brakes much better, and if you had to slam on with the cable hydros, you could steel feel the cables stretch, which to my mind kind of defeats the point of hydraulics.

from what i can gather the general consensus is that cable actuated hydraulic systems are a bit better than a straight cable operated system.

Not sure how this would make sense, respectfully. How can reviews of a system that a lot of people are unaware of be accurately compared with far more familiar systems? I’d imagine the only people venturing an opinion on cable actuated hydraulic systems are those using them, most others won’t have tried ’em. Lots of people will tell you cable disk brakes aren’t good compared to hydraulic, but some are fine. I’d prefer a cheap set of hydraulics myself.

I’ve had cable discs (BB7, BB5), cable/hydro (Hope V-Twin) and most flavours of Shimano road/gravel hydraulics, all the way back to the original 785 and 685s.

Personally, if it’s at all economically feasible, I’d try to get the extra cash together for the full hydros, possibly SH. For me the BBs always needed some adjusting, not bad, but a pain after a while, especially when it occurs mid ride and yo7 don’t realise. The Hopes were okay, but the cables paths were utterly stupid for normal shifters (not washing lines) requiring lots of sharp bends and resulting in really poor cable performance even with top end cables. Micro leaks aside, my hydros just go on and on and on for thousands of km in the worst of conditions.

if you had to slam on with the cable hydros, you could steel feel the cables stretch, which to my mind kind of defeats the point of hydraulics.

I found the key to good cable discs was a very sharp pair of cable cutters, then grinding the end down to make it perfectly flat. Also using good quality compressionless outer cables.

I’d replace the inners and outers from time to time which does add up. I havent touched my road full hydraulics!

Thanks for the replies all. Yes absolutely full hydraulics would be ideal, it’s what I have on the nice road bike and I’m a convert, but as I’m still running 9 speed on this bike I don’t think Shimano do any 9 speed hydro shifters so an upgrade would require nearly a whole new groupset.

Thanks @Aidy the Juin R1’s look a good middle ground between the cheap and cheerful and the nearly as expensive as full hydro set up, will probably go for those unless something better comes along.

I had R1’s on a daily commuter, the fork mounted one was fine but the chainstay mounted unit allowed mud and grit down the actuating rod and eventually gummed it up and destroyed the seals.

TRP HY-RD here on an older cross come commuter bike. Bike has had canti mini Vs, BB7 beforehand. The TRPs are hands down better than all before. Better power and modulation than the BB7s and the disc rub was also such a pain.

Heavy and bulky though. Bike put on a bit of weight in comparison to canti days and I’m sure flat mount modern full hydro would be lighter too. Also, quite a bit of lever throw before the bit point that can’t be fettled out. I do love the little lock screws though, that’s a nice feature.

I’ve been using the Zoom cable hydraulics on my GT grade for 2 years plus now. Much as I expected to die, they just keep rolling on.

I had hy-rds on a road bike, thought they were brilliant tbh- if you’d told me they were full hydro I’d have believed you. Ugly and massive obviously and there was a fair bit of faff to get them feeling how I wanted, but still I was massively impressed.

Why do you want hydraulic cable pulled calipers?

If your moving from rim brakes, bb7s or spyres will feel amazing.

I had spyres on my diverge, never better than acceptable and needed constant adjustment. Have had Juin Tech R1’s for a couple of years now and they are much better, very much better. Mine have held up well to being on a bike used as a winter road bike, commuter and summer gravel bike. I can see how the rear may gum up but mine hasn’t so far. Impressive and cheap, if mine died I would buy again.

I have used mechanical, cable actuated hydro, and full hydro, and the performance increases exponentially in that order

Full mechanical is imo worse than rim brakes. Even with trp spyres fitted with compressionless cables, the performance is dire

Semi hydros are a step up (I currently have the trp version on one of my bikes and a Ali express special on another) both work, but certainly nowt to get excited about

Then we get to full hydros, I have them on 3 bikes and they are head and shoulders above the others in every way

Interesting with the different experiences.

I had BB7’s for quite a few years. They were fine for power but needed constant adjustment as the pads wore. Then I changed frames to a Cotic Escapade and as the brake is on the chainstay my left heel kept hitting the caliper.

So I bought TRP HyRds. They needed a lot of fettling to get working well, but still less powerful than the BB7’S. Once fitted they don’t need further adjustment though.

Anyone who says cable actuated disc brakes perform badly hasn’t used well set up cable actuated discs. Not a criticism.

They’re major drawback is their failure to self adjust  which in poor weather you definitely need to be aware of.

Bb7s or if you’re feeling really flush Paul’s clampers.

I like the phrase “economically feasible” from above. My experience is I had some cable mechanical disc brakes, fine when working well, but I also had a front brake failure and in the end went for the Giant hybrid half way house (like Hope V-twin) they mount on the stem (so you need Giant stem) and I was not sure…. BUT they are GREAT, short cable pull and straight through so no difficult bends. So all good here, although a pain as I wanted the hoses internally routed for my frame and it took a while, but worth it.

I have used mechanical, cable actuated hydro, and full hydro, and the performance increases exponentially in that order

Nah. Not exponentially.

Another vote for the Giant system here. I’ve got the first version which is fine if a bit fiddly to set up. The newer comes with cable adjustment I think, which should make it a doddle. The special stem/faceplate does take up space on the bars though.

Cable discs are definitely equivalent to good rim brakes and are much less variable in the wet. It’s just the adjustment that sucks.

If your frame/forks are flat mount, I have a set of Tektro cable operated road disc calipers kicking around somewhere that are almost new. You’d need to supply cables and the rotors, but if you wanted the calipers you could have them for postage and a donation to charity.

Cable discs are definitely equivalent to good rim brakes and are much less variable in the wet. It’s just the adjustment that sucks.

Not as good as good road bike rim brakes (dual pivot calliper); at least equivalent, if not a bit better, than budget road bike rim brakes; loads better than CX cantis, imo.

I’ve got mechanicals on my commuter and found the main problem with BBs (and I’ve had 5’s and 7’s) is they rattle terribly even when fitted correctly. The bike sounded like a bag of spanners. They also only have one sided adjustment which means eventually adjusting the post mounts as pads wear or they grip the rotors unequally and noisily. Gave up with the BB’s due to the rattling and went for TRP Spyres which are quiet, have dual adjustment and are reasonably powerful but nowhere near hydraulic.

@jon_n That’s very decent of you, my frame and forks are IS/post respectively, however if i can source some adaptors i’ll PM you😀

@devbrix BB7s have dual adjusters. Can’t say I remember them rattling when I had them.

Cable actuated hydraulics seem like the worst of both worlds to me, but that’s perhaps due to being permanently scarred by the experience of trying to make the old Hayes cable/hydro units from around 2000 work when Trek specced them and I was a mechanic.

I had the Giant system on my Arkose, which had a nine speed set up, with cable brakes as standard.

I paid my LBS to install the Giant system, but was very happy with it. The brake fluid reservoir does take up quite a lot of space on the bars, where you might otherwise want to put lights though.

(EDIT: I has to put a Giant stem on the bike too as the bolt spacing was different, at the time, to a regular stem. This may have changed with the newer iteration.)

Replaced my bb7s with TRP HyRd and love them.   You could get the bb7s to work really well by keeping them adjusted but once set up the HyRds just seemed to keep on working well with no faff. Wouldn’t go back

Been happy with my BB7s and cheap Shimanos (515?) But haven’t tried anything fancier! On road bikes that is

I had hayes (can’t remember which ones) single sided,
Cable discs on my old cx/tourer bike, worked absolutely fine, plenty of power.
Also had hayes on my wife’s old kona, worked the same.
I’ve used bb7 before on several bikes, really not that good, less power, finicky to set up.
But proper hydros are, imho, in a different league, maybe not in absolute power, but in ease and reliability of use.

These were the Hayes numbers.

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/NOS-Hayes-Mag-cable-actuated-disc-brake-w-160mm-rotor-hardware-manual-opt-box-/163909317439?mkcid=16&mkevt=1&_trksid=p2349624.m46890.l49286&mkrid=711-127632-2357-0

/shudders/

I’ve got the Giant Conduct SL system on my gravel bike. Running with Shimano MTB calipers, rather than the standard tektro ones. It’s great.

I had Shimano cable disc brakes before that for a good few years that worked fine, but the chain stay mounted caliper let loads of shit in and it all rested in a low spot under the bb. In winter it’d get water in and freeze up. The Giant system, like the hope V-Twin is closed hydraulic system from the bars down so not crap getting into the outers.

TBH, the BB5s and 7s i’ve played with are about on a par with ultegra and D-A caliper brakes in the dry for modulation and outright power, in the wet, the mech discs are definitely better, by some chunks. But this is the same for hydro and hybrid discs too.

On the flip side, the rims brakes need virtually no servicing or looking after to keep the performance consistent. Just new pads every few thousand km and new cables every now and again.

The BB5/7 needed a tweak every week or three to keep them consistent. And if you let them go too far, you could suddenly lose braking.

NB. i always do mech braking (and gear) cables properly. Sharp tools, cable ends ground flat, ferrules fitted properly etc etc.

but the chain stay mounted caliper let loads of shit in and it all rested in a low spot under the bb. In winter it’d get water in and freeze up.

It amazes me that no company has come up with a cable boot similar to V brakes to minimise this affect. I’d have bodged one by now if I ever had the time to do bike maintenance!

Juin tech on an old nine speed Cx bike here which doubles as a winter hack / spare. They’ve been pretty faultless over the years with minimal love and attention lavished on them . Not as good as full hydros but pretty good – also very easy to adjust for pad wear.

Replaced the Spyres on my daughter’s Liv Avail with the Giant Conduct system. Very glad we did. The Spyres were OK-ish when fettled and with new cables, but the Conduct just works. In an ideal world I’d have just put Ultegra hydros on, but the Conduct was a fraction of the cost and work 90% as well.

I was unimpressed with Spyres and my Sram Red 10 shifters. They never felt much better than rim brakes.
I’m using ZTTO (similar to Juin tech) cable hydraulics on my UPPER and they feel pretty good. Not quite full hydr performance, but I have a spare set of eTap rim shifters and they work really well together until I upgrade to DA 12 (or GRX 12 if it comes out)

I’ve been using the Zoom cable hydraulics on my GT grade for 2 years plus now. Much as I expected to die, they just keep rolling on.

I didn’t even know these were a thing. £34 on ebay for front and rear which is nearly a quarter of the price of a single HY/RD caliper. I’ve procrastinated about upgrading the rubbish Tektro mechanical discs on the Arkose for ages now so I’m going to take a punt. The single thread I found on here seems to have no bad news about them.