Dammit’s adventures in mountain biking

Strap the front lever down hard then hang the bike up so that the lever is above the caliper. That should force air to the top of the system (but not in to the reservoir). Leave it for a bit. Carefully take the bike down, hook up the bleed kit to the calliper and lever to push fluid up through it. This should take the air out through the lever.

I’d be careful with the quick suck bleed thing - the seal on the ebp isn’t that great and it could be sucking air in rather than out.

Magura just emailed me, apparently the threads in the bleed port were stripped so they're replacing the brake (rear).

You rang?

Looks like my FS isn't going to arrive when they said it would so I might have to practice what I preach

My frame is in transit. I'll be returning my loaner bike soon and then moving to TT training so I'll have 3k worth of hardtail doing fuck all for months.

TT train on the MTB for the first 3 months. It's all pedalling. Didn't hold Pidcock back

Bled the front brake at lunchtime, both brakes are (currently!) working very well.

Magura life:

2 Attachments

https://microcosm.app/out/kmVui

It’s a thing of great beauty, but not for me.

Update on my 240 EXP, bi-directional freewheel. It’s one of the ones in the recall, I can have a free 36 tooth ratchet to replace my current, fucked one.

I asked if I could pay the difference and get the 54 tooth one (whilst we’re in there...) but was told that I was welcome to pay full price for a 54 tooth ratchet and do what I wanted with my recall replacement 36t.

Aka “get fucked”, it seems to me. Hey ho.

Day off today to go riding with Jim and Sam to wish them well on their move to other shores, good fun and included a full out-the-front-door roll down a hill. Brakes working very well (so far!)

Front brake was clearly working very well!

I have just made my own version of Maguras pro bleed kit, which hopefully means that I never need to bleed a Magura brake ever again.

I did an interesting morning of 1:1 coaching with Paul from the Trail Academy yesterday. Conclusions are that I can jump better than I can corner, and I’m not great at jumping. Still- plenty to work on!

With regards to the jumping I need to stand up fully, with my knees straight (but not locked out), has anyone tackled this particular issue successfully?

When it comes to cornering I need to get down over the bike significantly more than I currently do, and I need to lean it much more aggressively than I do at present.

I’m going to work on these things for a few weeks then have another session.

and I need to lean it much more aggressively than I do at present.

Don’t lean.

Ok, brake update for those who can get to the end of this sentence before falling face first into their keyboard, snoring.

Current setup on the RC295 is as follows:

On the bike: Magura MT7 callipers, standard Magura performance pads, HC3 adjustable brake levers set to "least power".

On the wheels: 2.4 DHR II's, MDR-P rotors, 203 front and 180mm rear.

I fitted these brakes a few weeks ago now, and I've ridden them at (in order) Bedgebury, Windhill, Surrey Hills repeatedly, and Swinley, in rain varying from "Biblical" to "mild".

Given my past experience with Magura I'm going to qualify this somewhat, but at the moment the brakes fall into the "just work" category, and what that means is that the bite point is in the same place front and rear, you get that tactile "clang" as the pads contact the rotor and power builds in a linear fashion as you apply pressure to the lever. Ultimate power is huge, indeed I discovered that I need to pay far more attention to modulating it as locking the front DHR II on steep descents is very easy. Modulating the power is, when not panicking, easy as there's a lot of feel from the lever.

The rear can be locked at will, instantly - not a given with the old (and now replaced by Magura Service UK) calliper, and I'm now over the hump on trusting it I think. Not that I ride around doing skid skids, but the old brake just didn't have the bite to stop the rear wheel, the new one is (by every definition) a new experience.

I will admit that when I got this bike bleeding hydraulics was one of the few things (along with wheel building) that I relied upon my LBS for. That's now reduced to wheel building, as I've developed quite a lot of experience of bleeding brakes in quite a short time.

I'd say that Magura brakes need vacuum to be bled properly, and that it is very easy to think that you've bled them when you haven't. Mine don't pump up when they have air in them, but the bite point will be close to the bars and they'll lack ultimate power - but they can be ridden like this, which would leave you thinking that they were just shit brakes, rather than poorly installed.

During a bleed I'd recommend that you add a step that Howard advised - pull the brake lever and use a toe-strap or a re-usable zip-tie to lock it in place, then apply vacuum with the syringe to the calliper. This can coax air out of the calliper that otherwise stays in place, despite tapping the calliper, having it at the bottom of a vertical hose run to the master cylinder and so on.

The Magura "Fast Bleed" which is on the Magura YouTube service page isn't sufficient to bleed the system, if you want to get the brake bled then you have to do the full version. I imagine (but do not know) that the fast bleed could be a good way of getting a little air out when you've just shortened the hoses on install - I would, on balance, do that first and see if it worked before doing the full version.

I've now made a version of the Magura pro-bleed kit after watching Magura North America service manager (Joel something?) bleeding a brake and talking about how the design of it gave you a useful amount of vacuum on the lever end. When my pro-bleed kit arrived from Magura it actually lacked an element that would give this, so I modified it somewhat. I'm hoping that it now stays in the toolbox for rather a long time unused, but we shall see.

Pros:

• Very powerful
  
• Bite point is always in the same place
  
• Lots of modulation
  
  

Cons:

• They're not "Shimano simple" to bleed
  
• Bike shops are scared of them and carry no spares
  
• If you get a crap one it can turn into a soap-opera (I should have sent my old ones back a long, long time ago, but stuck with them because I'm stupid)
  
  

I'd say the Trail SL's are all you need in the UK unless you're heavy or riding downhill, neither of which apply to me but I will (post-Covid) be riding this bike in the Alps as much as I can (unless Pace release their new Enduro bike before I can get to the PDS) so the four-piston calliper on the back is handy.

I also think the fluoro yellow looks "right" on a Pace, because nostalgia.

1 Attachment

.

1 Attachment

Bike shops are scared of them and carry no spares.

We now do since the introduction of certain bikes like the Tern GSD.

and all riese and muller and bakfiets

Yeah...they are on every good utility bike

Our bakfiets cargo bike has MT4.

This is good news (for me, at least, and cargo cyclists).

I'm not sure having magura brakes is good for cargo cyclists unless they really love bleeding and rebuilding

My maguras (MT4 I think) have been faultless.
I've just put them on a different bike after leaving them in a box for 8 months too, and they just work, no bleeding or fettling, just great brakes.

Once you get them working well you don't have to do anything to them for years....the MT6 I have on my hardtail are like five years without a bleed, zero issues, zillions of KMs on them.

I think that context here is important, and the context is that the Magura Service centre replaced my rear brake (the one that I was having all the issues with) wholly, so lever, calliper, hose etc, even though they blamed my experience on a stripped thread in the EBT on the lever.

I'm not saying I don't believe them, but it's what I might say if the brake was a lemon and I didn't want to put that on a warranty return.