I have some old zee brakes that appear to be leaking/ weeping. As new callipers are not available does anyone know if saint calipers would work? Would all the cables work?

AKAIK the calipers are near as damn it identical. Saints just came with better levers with more adjustments. They will definitely be interchangeable though. I have run Zee calipers with XT, SLX and deore type levers without any problems

@munkyboy did you fit the Saint caliper with the Zee lever? I’m thinking of doing the same after discovering a crack in rear Zee caliper, and was trying to find info on compatibility.

saints and zee’s are completely interchangeable and are effectively the same product, the saint’s having more adjustment on the levers and a pad retaining bolt rather than the split pin used on the zee callipers (although the zee calliper is threaded for the bolt)

Work in progress here. All research suggests it will work. Just need the time to fit it.

All Shimano levers will work with any Shimano caliper as long as you have the correct hose fittings at each end.

You don’t even need Saints.

4-pot Deores / SLX / XT / whatever you can grab cheap will be fine.

I’ve got a Zee lever with a 2 pot XT and it’s excellent.

As loads of people have gone for a Shigura setup, and I have gone for TRimano*, you definitely wont have an issue mixing similar Shimano parts

*TRP Quadiem calipers, Shimano XT levers

Yeah as said above, Shimano are generally all cross compatible. I’ve run older style Saint and XT calipers with newer style XT levers, was just a question of the getting the right connectors – I ended up with Saint gold banjos etc. Now swapped to XTR 4 pot calipers (found a ridiculous deal that was cheaper than XT) with XT levers, no change to the hose, just a slightly different fitting to the caliper, all work great.

I’d be interested in the calipers if youd like to sell Munkeh?? Hit me with a Pm.

As said above. zee and Saint are interchangeable. I’ve also mixed Zee, XT, Saint and SLX in various configurations (due to them having a habit of dying all the time and spares being unavailable) without any problems or lack of power/performance.

The fact that Shimano seem to treat their products (especially brakes) as basically disposable and non repairable is one of the reason why I’ve switched away from them. That and the annoying as hells ‘wandering bite point’.

From now on I’ll probably switch to Hope as they’re 100% rebuildable.