I'm considering putting flared drop bars on my old mtb. Currently it's a dingle speed, so I don't need shifters. I've not been able to find road style brake levers ( hydraulic) that aren't brake/shifter combos. Not looking for anything fancy, 105 level or similar. I'm happy to reuse my old calipers rather than buy a whole set if it's more cost effective.
Only hydraulic non-brifter levers I can think of are TRP Hylex RS. They only sell them with the calipers, so it may not be very cost effective for you. I have a set and really like them, hoods are super comfortable, the brakes are excellent.
Thanks JW, the TRP look nice and I've heard good things about TRP in general, but you're right, they're too high a buy-in for my project. If I was going TRP, I might consider the cable actuated hydro caliper they make, I've got a buddy who uses those on his take-apart (travel) bike and he raves about them.
mikbik wrote:If I was going TRP, I might consider the cable actuated hydro caliper they make, I've got a buddy who uses those on his take-apart (travel) bike and he raves about them.
I'm using TRP HY/RD brakes (with 180 mm Shimano rotors and Swissstop E pads). They work great and you can use any lever - I'm using Campy TT levers on a Deda Dabar. I'm also using Jagwire Road Link Elite cables with aluminum beads for housing. Those are light and flexible but don't add any slop to the system. Altogether most of the performance of hydraulics without any of the fuss.
If you go the route of hydro calipers, you should also check out Juin Tech. I'm too lazy to look up pricing, but my suspicion is that if you do Juin Tech or the HY/RD, by the time you get the calipers and levers, you're basically in the same $ range as the Hylex RS, which are a lot better. To my mind, your choice might be determined by how fancy you want to get. If it's just an old bike to play around on, and you want to go cheap, I recommend getting some used TRP Spyres (good brakes, for mechanical) and something like Apex 1 or Rival 1 levers. You could take the shifter guts out of the right one.
Thanks everybody for the input. To be truthful, I had hydro on the brain and forgot about mechanical. The last time I used mechanical discs, they were BB7s. I don't think I have them around any more though. Like I said originally, I'm just looking for a moderate priced setup for this bike. I use it for cruzin' the river trails down here, not much vertical involved, so I don't need super strong brakes. I'll have to do some research on mech brakes now. I'm not opposed to used, so I'll look around. Thanks again for your input.
If you haven't tried mechanical in a while they're MUCH better now. I'm running TRP's Spyre and Spyke on a couple of bikes with SRAM levers, and with compressionless housing they feel amazing. This was after giving up on their Hylex after multiple caliper failures. Doesn't matter how good the levers feel if the pistons stop retracting...
TRP Spyres are great. The stock pads are kinda crummy but once you put in something nicer and use some good compressionless housing they come into their own. Nice and easy to adjust too.
I dunno the look of your bike but TRP RRL SR levers are really pretty, get good reviews, and are reasonably priced.
I've used JuinTech (or Yokozuna Motoko) brakes on my kid's cx bike. They work well with little brake input, though I did have an issue with one caliper failing due to dirt getting in there. They replaced it (Yokozuna). But price is right and they weigh less than Spyres (and much less than Hy/Rd).
Spyres are not bad, though I'd hesitate to say they are in same league as full hydros. They work fine, though, at stopping the bicycle.
I'm using Avid mechanical brakes on 160mm rotors and they stop equally as nice as my hydro brake bikes. I got them out of a used parts bin at my lbs. As long as you know how to adjust them for pad wear, they're great.
Turbogrover wrote:I'm using Avid mechanical brakes on 160mm rotors and they stop equally as nice as my hydro brake bikes. I got them out of a used parts bin at my lbs. As long as you know how to adjust them for pad wear, they're great.
Turbogrover wrote: I'm using Ultegra 10 spd brifters.
I have only used BB7s with SRAM levers, but the performance of their road calipers was really lackluster compared to the MTB BB7s. I could never get them much better than min-v road brakes.
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