Hope V-Twin – powerful?

Are they supposed to be more powerful than Avid BB7s?

Just installed a set, after running BB7s for years and I was expecting at least as powerful. I could lock up the bb7s at any point if I wanted. Seems that the Hopes need more of a pull to get the power, fine from the drops but not from the hoods.

Just changed the pads to see if it was that.

Not really an answer to your question, but I wonder if Hope are going to get pushed out of the disk brake market given that road bikes combine brake lever and gear shifter? V Twin isn’t going to tempt anyone over the full shimano or SRAM hydro setup.

I can’t see how they can benefit from the growth in road bike disk brakes, without teaming up with a group set manufacturer (of which there are few/none without disk brake solutions already). Unless I’m being thick and you can run a hope calliper with a shimano lever.

TBF, it was hardly a major market for them anyway so not much to lose.

the Hopes are powerful, but as you’ve experienced modulation from the hoods can be poor, where it can be very hard to pull the lever, a smooth cable run from the lever to the unit helps here

I guess, but the MTV market probably(?) isn’t growing, and there’s lots of competition. The road disk market is growing like the clappers.

Just seems a shame to be locked out of the road market due to the existence of dual brake/gear shifters.

I’ve got a smooth cable pull as in using v brake noodles to the unit itself.

Modulation is not that odd. It’s just to get any power from the brakes I have to pull a lot harder than I did from the bb7s. As they are part hydraulic I thought id get more power for less effort. The cable part is using compressionless cables.

Thats why I thought it might be the pads or needed a bleed etc. but as I have not tried another persons v twins I don’t know what ‘good’ should be.

Got a V Twin setup on my CX, it was the only option for mechanical 10sp shifters + hydraulic brakes at the time I built it.

It can be very powerful but it’s susceptible to poor cable routing. Run it with the best quality cables you can, ideally those Shimano super-slippy ones and change them regularly. Keep a nice smooth curve from the bar down to the under-stem converter. They’re very very good but they can take a bit of time to get them just right. Also, they bed in. First long road descent I went down, the difference between top and bottom was incredible. They need to be run hot to work best.

I looked at a pair of v twins but in the end went for hyrds – excellent from the hoods or the drops though a bit of a faf to set up.