Hope 6 piston brakes. Much better than 4 ?

I’m after some brakes for a tandem.
The Hope Mono 6Ti, Mono 6 or Moto M6 look good, partly because, well, they just look good.
Are they much much better than the much more common 4 piston varieties though ?
There must be a reason why Hope only made them for a short time and why no other manufacturer makes 6 piston brakes. Why did they not catch on ?

I’ve heard that friction doesn’t depend on contact area, so counter intuitively, a larger brake pad doesn’t “grip” any better than a smaller one.
Is that true ? If so, I guess the main advantage would be longer life between pad changes, as there is more material to wear away, and less heat build up, as there is more material to absorb it.

They would look cool on a tandem though, wouldn’t they. 😉

Yes, it’s true – kind of – assuming the same force at the brake lever and leverage ratios, etc. The biggest advantage I reckon you’ll find on a tandem is that there’s more material in the calipers which means they should cope with heat better.

I only tried the six pots out once years ago.
If you like the look of them, that is really the only reason to get them.

Performance wise, a basic modern deore with a big rotor will totally spank the mono 6.

Just get a set of V4’s or Zee’s, both brakes produce a ridicilous amount of power even compared to Formula’s R0’s which used to hold the top spot in terms of raw power.

Zee’s for marginally more power and less cost.

V4’s for modulation and the best lever adjustment on the market.

It’s not just about power when you’re talking about tandems.

Performance wise, a basic modern deore with a big rotor will totally spank the mono 6.

Why ? I’ve never understood how one brake can be considered better or worse than another.
It’s a pretty basic hydraulic circuit, with leverage ratio, master cylinder area and slave cylinder area as the only variables.
Surely, most of the difference between any two brakes is down to pad material.

It’s not just about power when you’re talking about tandems.

Which is why I thought the better wear and heat dissipation of the bigger pads would be an advantage.

Fade or boiling fluid? Vented rotors and castrol SRF fluid for the Hopes – Icetech pads and rotors for the Shimanos. I’d place a bet that the Shimano’s would deal with fade better whilst the Hopes would resist boiling the fluid better.

That depends how quickly the caliper and rotor dissipates heat! The V4 can’t be far off the M6 in terms of weight/size and it’s ribbed to increase it’s surface area. Plus, if the brake produces more power off the bat – fade is not going to become a problem as quickly.

Why ? I’ve never understood how one brake can be considered better or worse than another.
It’s a pretty basic hydraulic circuit, with leverage ratio, master cylinder area and slave cylinder area as the only variables.

Yes but like most things it’s in the detail. Flex in the system,leverage ratios, pad drag, pad material, rotor size and design and so on will all have an effect.

on a tandem I’d imagine any ‘give’ in the hose becomes significant for the rear brake given the length of the run. you wouldn’t need to have much hose expansion under pressure to lose a lot of braking force.

I was assuming all other things as being equal.

Perhaps this deserves a thread of it’s own, but if two brakes have, say, a 5:1 lever ratio, a 10mm master piston, a 15mm slave piston, the same diameter disc, the same pads and the same hoses, how can one have more power or better modulation than the other ?

Tom, there are still people touring on tandems with rim brakes.
We’ve had no problems with fade so far with Mini Mono brakes on Clee Hill or the Black Mountains, so this may all be overkill anyway.

Early ones had Ti pistons hence the Mono 6 Ti name. I believe later ones were Phenolic to deal with heat better as the Ti piston transmitted the heat to the oil rather well. They were good brakes back in the day but absolutely outclassed by many modern brakes (Like the Formula Th1 I use now).

I can imagine that a tandem would see plenty of brake dragging action so big rotors to dissipate heat would be a good idea… but as to which brake would work best I have no idea. I use Formula brakes because I love how the lever fits my braking finger – that is the only reason.

wwaswas, yes, there’s more hose to bulge, if that’s going to be a problem, but I’ve never noticed any difference between the front and rear brakes of a solo, so I don’t think it would be.

Lever pivot location(Compare Avid with Shimano) and moving pivots (e.g. Shimano Servo Wave) have a lot to do with modulation I would have thought.

Tom, there are still people touring on tandems with rim brakes.
We’ve had no problems with fade so far with Mini Mono brakes on Clee Hill or the Black Mountains, so this may all be overkill anyway.

Honestly, get some V4’s or Zees. You’ll save an arse load of weight over the M6’s – mostly in the ridiculous almost motorbike heavy lever the M6 came with.

We’ve run the same pair of Ti6’s since about ’04, originally on the Cannondale and now on the Ventana, and they’re still going strong.
Obviously, our experience may be different, but I’ve found them to be excellent, and have utter trust in them, which on a tandem coming down the red run at Glencoe is worth more than anything.

To pick up on the previous comments-

They would look cool on a tandem though, wouldn’t they.

Yep they sure do!

It’s not just about power when you’re talking about tandems

Agreed, you tend to use the back brake more, and it can do a hell of a lot more stopping than on a solo because there’s more weight on the back wheel. The Cannondale could only fit a 185mm rear disc, but the Ventana is running 203mm.

on a tandem I’d imagine any ‘give’ in the hose becomes significant for the rear brake given the length of the run. you wouldn’t need to have much hose expansion under pressure to lose a lot of braking force.

Yep, braided hoses help, as does careful bleeding as there’s a lot of hose to hide air bubbles. Another benefit of Hope’s – the bleeding is very easy.

We’ve had no problems with fade so far with Mini Mono brakes on Clee Hill or the Black Mountains, so this may all be overkill anyway

The words ‘brake’ and ‘overkill’ cannot be used in the same sentence when discussing MTB tandems!

You’ll save an arse load of weight over the M6’s – mostly in the ridiculous almost motorbike heavy lever the M6 came with.

On something that weights around 50lbs + 2 people and cannot hop, wheelie, or unweight a wheel, and therefore survives by being the slightly more irresistible force than the immovable object, saving weight is well down the priority list. Durability, function, ‘please don’t break and kill me and my wife’ and more durability are top of my list. Also that big lever is handy, as you can get a second or even third finger on there if need be! On a big descent (as per the pic above) you’ll pick up speed so fast that you’ll be braking almost all the time, so one-finger braking soon gets tiring.
After that descent at Glencoe, which we did a number of times, the discs were blue with heat at the bottom. No boiling fluid but just a hint of them starting to loose bite.

I recall JD Cycles in Ilkley, purveyors of all things tandem, tested loads of tandem disc brakes by steaming down the big hill into Ilkley and seeing what stopped quickest, and what didn’t fade. I think Magura Gustavs came out top, followed by Hope.
On all the high end MTB tandems I’ve seen, I don’t recall Shimano being the brake of choice on any.

As I said, just our experience, others may disagree, but I’d put a pair of Ti6’s on a tandem any day.

Rob & Sandy

Had one of the old Ti6’s, it came with a deeper rotor to cover the pads which helped, I ran it on an old DH bike that probably came close to the weight and handling characteristics of the tandem…Good brake, had a hope bleed and tune up on it which helped as there is a bit of technique to bleeding them. Apart from that some had a “special” mounting bracket to get it to work with modern IS&Post mounts.

I found the Hope V2 more powerful than the 6Ti; and if you have the Hope V2 and want more surface area to cool the disc’s you could go for these vented discs…

Also available for the V4.

Thanks tandemwarriorss, it’s always good to have first hand accounts of what works in the real world.
I’ve been posting this stuff in Facebook as well and TandemJermey, (remember him ? 🙂 ), also recommends the 6ti.

But, I’ve been having other ideas as well…

I’m making some 5mm thick dropouts to fit the 135mm Rohloff hub in to a 145mm tandem frame, like this;

By using a 140mm adapter with a 200mm disc, it raises the back end of the bike by 20mm.
Reading up on the Hope 6 piston calipers, they use a unique adapter, so at first I thought I wouldn’t be able to use them with that set up above.
Then I thought that if I’ve got a 5mm plate dropout, I can drill holes in it to suit the adapter.
Then, continuing that train of thought, if I can make a dropout any shape I want and drill mounting holes in it, I could do this…

Or even this…

Reading previous threads about one armed bikers and running two brakes off one lever, Hope don’t recommend it as there is not enough fluid in the reservoir to supply two calipers, so if I do that, it might be best to have it as an old style independent drag brake with the lever on the stoker’s bars.

The Hope Ti6 uses a special adapter but the the later Mono6 is post mount & uses standard post to IS adapters which makes things easier.

They work well with a Rohloff – this is my Cove G spot using a ‘B’ adapter & 180mm disc.

I’m selling a pair if you check my posting history 😉

We’ve got Hope Motos with vented rotors on our tandem.
Tried loads of other brakes on it before. None of them could hack it.
The vented rotor really does seem to make a difference on long descents.

I’m not a huge Hope fan but the Moto or whatever it’s called now seem up to the job.

My view is don’t worry about 6 pot calipers; the hope M4’s on a tandem are fine; they have plenty of power – it is the heat build-up that is the problem, causing brake fade. We use the old Hope 225 disks on our tandems with M4’s and that works great; definitely a 225 on the front and perhaps a 203 on the rear but we run 225’s both front and rear. They still get very hot in the summer on a long downhill but so far havn’t suffered any brake fade.

Look very nice but the braking force is spread across more area so isn’t as great at any given point. However, there is a much larger braking surface so braking should be ‘better’. If you are using the same lever on a 2-pot; 4-pot and 6-pot brake, the 2-pot will have more braking force as there are less pistons getting the braking force so it is higher. Saying that, it uses smaller pads so the braking surface isn’t as great so they don’t feel as good as more pot-laden brakes.

I’m sure my mate has them on his tandem…work amazingly well, but he spent a lot of time setting them up to his liking.

It’s the total surface area of the pistons that counts, not just the number of pistons.
I’ve bought the Mono 6 brakes off Snaps now, plus a longer length of braided hose for the rear, anyway.
Going by intuition, with no evidence to back it up, a longer pad will spread the same heat build up over a larger area, so won’t get as hot.