Lewis brakes – any good?

I’ve seen this new brand pop up. CNC brakes from China. The look kind of decent quality. Anyone tried them?

Straight off copies of trickstuff but keenly priced at it appears £350 for f&r

never heard of them; wouldn’t even consider them until they’ve been thoroughly tested by several people who know what they’re on about and their reviews are published.

I sceptical but if they are copying trick stuff who make the best brakes going, then these Lewis ones bike be decent.

I have found this YouTube review.

Tempted. Typical recently got 2 sets of tech4 🙄

But if you can get a pair for £280, might be worth snapping up a set if they are as good as the vid says, before the price inevitably climbs.

I saw that video, couldn’t decide if it was a review or an infomercial.

I find it irksome that they’ve straight up copied someone else’s work and even more so that they’re trying to wash over that fact. “We’ve taken the best of all brakes and refined it further”. 🤔

While I’m confident trickstuff pays it’s people a decent wage and has them working in decent conditions, I doubt they’ve making money hand over fist on their brakes.

I wonder how this compares to Lewis. I also wonder what small part availability is like. That’s the reason I don’t run Shimano brakes. But even if I did, I know I’d be able to find a compatible lever or caliper at a pinch.

I don’t know what’s more riling, China’s ability to copy and then somehow distribute somebody else’s intellectual property as their own, or the public’s willingness to buy the blatant copy as if that’s in any way all right. Shameful. 

Isn’t the reason the Trick$tuff brakes are so highly rated their precision machining to the finest mm and their quality control? That won’t come cheap and will be difficult to emulate in a Chinese factory. They might look the same, but is the precision there?

Bollocks to that for all the above reasons.

These remind me of the pressure washer I used at work years back, a Chinese clone of Honda.

It worked just fine for a while, then conked out.  No parts available, and Honda ones weren’t interchangeable as it’s not a perfect clone.

Scrap within 18 months. With a little care, those Honda engines run for decades.

Ethically, those brakes are such a ripoff I’d rather not support them, especially when Hope T4 are so good.

Amazing that the reach and bite point can apparently be adjusted separately with just one adjuster. Apparently much easier to bleed than Trickstuff too, despite being the same.

Plus a patented design? I’m sure it is, just not by them.

Remember kids creativity is great, but plagiarism is quicker and easier.

Yeah, nah.

Counterfeit brakes.  😳

When you can buy the shimano brakes world cup downhill riders use for the same money I think I’ll probably leave it.

The LH4 can be (or could be) had from one UK shop at £270 for the set.  I’ve had a go of them on a bike and they feel decent, and use Hope E4 pads.  However, no idea on spares availability for other parts.

They certainly felt better than the Code R that came on the Kenevo SL but then they are shit.  

I’ll be getting V4s for the HB916, and then putting my E4s on the KSL.

With the price you can get a decent set of brakes for at the min is it worth it? Buy a set of Hopes for another £100 and you’ll be able to get spares for the next 20 years, god knows if you’ll find anything for these in a year.

I have a set on a bike right now. Ive not had them long enough to assert any bold claims they are brilliant, but I can tell you they are certainly not bad brakes. They have plenty of power, good feel and the adjustments are really good. While visually they’re very similar to Trickstuff, technically there’s nothing magic/new about most of either Lewis or TS brake designs, so I think the plagiarism only extends as far as the looks, and even there the design is pretty reminiscent of 100 brakes that went before, albeit not fully CNCed. Put another way, couldn’t we accuse pretty much all brakes of being copies of Formulas?

At £130 less than the equivalent Tech 4 v4 they do make a solid case for themselves assuming longevity and support stacks up.

they started appearing all over insta and fb over the last few months, very nice looking, did have a google and not much came up. that’ll be trickstuffs look and silver that melted the heart , love my hope tech silver calipers and the levers, although not sure they’ll look that great with factory forks

I hope they have good longevity, having good support is great but it’s even better when you don’t ever need it.

Fair enough, anyone wants to send me a set I’ll do back to back comparisons with the Real Thing.

That single adjuster thing – on the video it appears to have 2 ‘stops’, the adjuster looks like it is 2 things and you pop the end bit out to adjust the other ‘thing’…

Any idea if a Trickstuff reservoir cap will fit them?

Asking for a friend… 🙂

Ever heard the metaphor “Standing on the shoulders of giants”

Thats how we’ve developed just about everything.

I wonder if Clarks will rebrand them? Almost seems like calling them Lewis is trolling Clarks

Thats how we’ve developed just about everything.

Has anything been developed here?

Ever heard the metaphor “Standing on the shoulders of giants”

Sure, but then there’s sneaking into the giant’s office and looking over his shoulder…

Thanks for that write up Ben – definitely more trustworthy than a video review that feels like a sales pitch.

£280 a set here:

https://submissioncycles.com/products/4-pot-steel-horizontal-black

mashr
Full Member
I wonder if Clarks will rebrand them?

They already have

https://www.bikeradar.com/features/first-look-clarks-crs-brakes/

Clarks ones even come with Hope calipers 🙂

anyone tried the Clarks rebands? they look no-nonsense design

https://www.crs.bike/

They already have

Didnt realise they were the same (admittedly also didn’t look).

So we do have Lewis and Clarks in that case – someone has to be taking the piss

Clarks / Lewis – they don’t appear to be exactly alike – lots of difference just visually

Bar clamp on the Lewis looks a bit less prone to flex.

That single adjuster thing – on the video it appears to have 2 ‘stops’, the adjuster looks like it is 2 things and you pop the end bit out to adjust the other ‘thing’…

So the adjuster is a regular barrel CNC thingy, but it has a second adjustment (via a grub screw) in the middle. Like a mini version of how high/low adjusters work on forks. The upside is its very neat, and the adjustments are meaningful and don’t mess with the other aspects of the brake. The downside is that without the little add on bit which you plug in the end to adjust the bite point, it’s actually quite hard to adjust (with an allen key on a tool). Maybe no harder than other brands, but none the less the extra dial you can plug in both makes all the difference and is also eminently looseable as its not fixed in way, its literally a tiny allen key on a thumb wheel.

Didnt realise they were the same (admittedly also didn’t look).

So we do have Lewis and Clarks in that case – someone has to be taking the piss

Those clarks are obviously a totally different brake as anyone with eyes can confirm. They may be great, I have not tried a set. You can get the Clarks ones in different brands, I don’t believe Lewis have sold their brakes under anyone else’s brand.

Lewis do actually make the brakes themselves – well Lewis is a brand owned by the actual manufacturer, but you know what I mean; they’re not just a rebadge. They seem good to deal with.

Bar clamp on the Lewis looks a bit less prone to flex.

it will be but there is a wee support outboard of the lever ala Shimano

@mashr,

yep that was the point making, the Clarks lever does not have this shimano esque bit, just one of visual differences.

there is a chap locally that has Lewis, based purely on lever feel (car park squeeze, no ride) they felt very nice.

@benpinnick,

how would you say the Lewis compare to latest Hopes?

I spotted these on the instagram feed of a mechanic who is famously anal picky about brakes. Admittedly he got sent a set for free but he seems to like them compared to MT7s.

I was really interested by the integrated bite point and lever throw adjuster and emailed the company directly to ask if they’d sell me just that part to try and bodge into my Direttissimas. The Direttissimas are amazing but a bite point adjustment would be a nice thing to have.

Anyway, they eventually refused to send me the parts which is fair enough, I wasn’t really expecting them to say yes, but before that they did tell me that every single part was available to buy as a spare and sent me these exploded diagrams to let me pick which parts I needed.

I do think it’s very crappy to rip off the Trickstuff aesthetic and I’d feel quite conflicted about buying a set.

how would you say the Lewis compare to latest Hopes?

Hmm. Probably on par in terms of power with a v4 but Ive not ridden the two back to back and the conditions Ive run the lewis in haven’t been anything like nice, so its been asked to do a lot. I think the lever on the Lewis has a more solid, shimano like feel which I prefer to the big moto lever on the Hope. The Lewis takes e4 pads so you get a little less friction area which I guess accounts for the feel differences too – it will need a bigger lever piston to caliper bore ratio to jack the power up, which will rob it a bit of the feel, but I happen to like that slightly firmer feel.

I should say one flaw is the lack of iSpec EV mount at this time. The wide clamping zone and length of lever makes set up with Shimano tricky. I run XT and Ive made it work but its not perfect. I needs an EV adaptor really. One is in the works I believe but its definitely better with SRAM at the mo.

Also worth noting you get a full goodridge hose set up, which while cool does mean you’re going to be spending more when / if you need rehosing down the line. Does mean of course no barbs etc. so easy to work with.

Two people i ride with have them and have been happy with them so far (plenty of power and modulation). They both pretty much said if the brake stay consistant then for money it’s a no brainer.

People are spending £350 on no-name Chinese brakes? Because they look like Trickstuff (but aren’t really?) and have been plugged by some “influencers”?

Genuinely surprised by that.