Morning guys

I had a set of Shimano M596 callipers and levers fitted yesterday. Now I’ve not been out for a proper ride yet, but my initial observation is that there is a lot of dead travel on the levers before the brakes start to bite – at least 1 cm of totally dead travel.

The levers came pre-bleed but the guy in the shop had to shorten the hoses, so would have had to re-bleed them. He did recommend coming back after a few rides to have them re-bleed and commented something to the effect of ‘they’re working fine, but not great’.

What I’m wondering is how much dead travel to expect – is this a trait of these levers, in which case I’m sure I’ll get used to it, or do you think with that much dead lever travel there is still air in the system?

Cheers

I just fitted a set yesterday, as a stopgap while my XTs are away being repaired.

I found that the M596 actually had less travel till they start to bite that the XTs. After fitting and bleeding yesterday, there was prob about half a cm of lever travel till they stated to bite, but lever was solid from that point on. Would suggest getting them bled, sounds like that’s all they need

On a positive note, I’ve only used them for one ride so far, but they’re not much worse than the XTs. A little less stopping power and modulation, but still awesome for a low/mid range set of brakes.

I think it’s a trait of them. My rear one does that too. If it were a bleed issue, I would expect that pumping the lever would at least temporarily fix it, but that doesn’t seem to help.

Try over-filling them. I do that to my older-style XTRs to move the “bite point” out.

Bite point is quite broad on current gen Deore/XT/SLX, you can adjust it out of them a bit on the XT’s with the tiny BPA on the side of the reservoir.
Or if thats not making the difference you want, then yes, you can over fill the reservoir (and bleed the hell out of them) and you’ll reduce the bite point a fair bit.
On the whole though, seriously good brake, once you’ve initially cut hoses, bled, set them up, 98% chance you’ll never have to touch them again, and they feel great.