Tell me about Avid disc brakes….

….Because I’ve never had any and I might be getting a bike with Juicy 3s.

What fluid do they use?
Are they easy to bleed? Is the kit really necessary?

We’ve got 4 other bike which all use Maguras and Shimanos, and I’m toying with the idea of swapping them for SLXs….Will the SLXs be much better (I doubt it)

🙂

bleed kit is a must and if used in conjunction with the youtube vid its a pleasure to do!

dot 4.1 or 5

Cheers
🙂

Should have said – Any other comments on J3s?

I have some J5s and they are simple ‘fit and forget’ units (thankfully)

You Tube vid is a must – thanks again to STWers who directed me there the other week….
Bleed kit is a must and, now I know how to do it, bleeding is straight forward……
This comes to you from a man who has an aversion to fettling / repairing anything that could have life endangering(ie failure following on from ‘maintenance’) potential…… 🙂

have 3 they work fine, bleeding is easy no issues to date

I have them and apart from a hole in the cable which I replaced, no problems at all. The bleed process is easy with the kit. Its dot 4 or 5.1 btw – not 4.1 or 5.

Good powerful brakes but can suffer from sticky and damaged pistons. Some seem fine but I’ve seen many fail spectacularly in the alps. However I’d be happy to run them on a ‘uk’ bike.

2 sets of Juicy 5s (…and soon also to have a set of Juicy 3s 😉 …although I’ll be selling them on); both sets work well if time is taken to set up right. Changing pads can be fiddly (It sounds so easy on the instructions: “Make a brake pad sandwich…blah,blah, blah”) espically in the middle of a cold wet ride.

i’ve had my fives on for 2yrs and never actually done any maintenance on them at all, accept maybe clean the pads and discs with brake cleaner once

Got J3s on a bike I bought a couple of weeks ago. I thought I’d be taking them off but I’ve been really impressed with them.

Just as much power and almost as much modulation as the J7s I had previously, but without the horrifying screeching (so far).

Thanks for the info guys, I reckon it’s best to hang on to them and see how they go first. I won’t need to bleed them for a while (hopefully) as it’s on a new bike
🙂

I ended up replacing my 3s before they were due a service. I got some 7s for not much more than the cost of two new sets of pads, one new rotor and a bleed kit.

Bought some second hand 5’s about 14 months ago. Never had to touch them. Incredibly powerful brakes. My 17st ass on a 33lb Enduro can stop on a dime.

Had a set of juicy fives which were good for the price and a friend had threes and I could not tell the difference between the two. I’m sure you can use dot 3 as well as 4 and 5.1 (make sure you dont use 5 though).

The Juicys are ok, they can tend to squeal a bit, but if yours don’t then don’t worry. Simple to bleed, well not as simple as Hopes.

If the reach and bite point suits your needs, then there’s nothing to worry about.

I do believe the Elixir is a better designed unit however.

To be honest I wouldn’t buy them again as I think changing pads is just so unnecessarily difficult.