Bought a pair of RX’s a few months back and the hoses are a good 5-6″ too long. Never bothered doing anything about it as it’s only aesthetic, not fuctional. But i’m dropping the bike into LBS this week to have a new for fitted (don’t have tools to shorten the steerer), so was debating if I should sort the brakes then too.

However, it seems a bit ‘weak’ as doing brakes is well within my skillset, but I don’t know how easy to trim and shorten hoses, all hoses I’ve swapped apart from a set of Shimano have been pre-cut.

What’s the best thing to use for cutting/trimming ?

A new stanley blade is as good as anything(use Shimano’s yellow blocks for support if needed). Be careful when bleeding the air from the lever, too much suction can dislodge the diaphragms quite easily on some Formulas.

May be obvious but you also need a new spike dooberry to push into the hose once cut as well as a new olive. It is easy though.

The formula kits come with all the gubbins to change the length, it was only the hose cutting that concerned me really as I wasn’t sure if they were braided lines and hence a little trickier. I’ll have to see if my mate is about to borrow his bleed tool too…

Thanks gents… appreciated.

Formula RX hoses are not metal braided and should cut fine with a knife/wire cutters/good pair of scissors.

You can buy small pipe cutters designed for chopping nylon airline/process pipework.
It looks a bit like a big clothes peg with a V-Shaped cutting blade.
They are really cheap, and a do a fantastic job.

– here you go…

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/like/120677831125?limghlpsr=true&lpid=102&device=c&adtype=pla&crdt=0&ff3=1&ff11=ICEP3.0.0&ff12=67&ff13=80&ff14=102

OEM Formula’s don’t come with anything extra though, just the levers and calipers. My R1s’s rear hose is too long but quoted $40 to shorten them I decided I can live with the length. (insert “ooer missus” reaction)

Shortened my RO’s recently. Easy enough to do. Didn’t need to bleed and re-used the original fittings..

Done it a couple of times; my brakes direct from Formula came with the joint kit the set from CRC didn’t.
Formula recommend you use the bleed kit to pull out any air bubble at the lever end.
Not a full bleed and easy to do.