Anyone know anything about disc brakes?

tell me please if my thinking is straight.
on my beater i have sram level tlm brakes. if left unattended the pads will get contaminated quickly. there's no air in the system though. is this the leaky piston thing?
if so, is this the thing I need https://r2-bike.com/SRAM-Brake-Caliper-Piston-Service-Kit-for-Level-TLM-Ultimate-Red-eTap-HRD-Monoblock ?

furthermore, is there a place to only get the piston o-rings for these 21mm pistons (it's the first gen level tlm), since the aforementioned sets seem kinda too much for two rubber rings.
the thing is, I'm not very fond of those brakes either, so I'm either trying to do this on the cheap side, or go for something different completely.

1 Attachment

If it's for a beater get cheap shimano Mt200 and save yourself a lot of grief

You mean only replacing the lever?
Should work but needs new barb and cutting of hose. Or leave hose in and replace both ends? That would need new oil and bleed I guess.
My Shimano sets came with lever not attached but caliper attached to hose, I would just use new caliper go through fork, shorten it not, and connect.

At least that's my home mechanics take.

Yeah sorry I’m not clear at all in my question.
Both my 105s are shot, leaky pistons and I’m changing to flat bar as well.
I suppose the question is can I just use the existing hose with my new caliper as the fittings won’t go through the hole in the fork. If not I’ll just use a heat shrink tube over the fork leg to hold the hose in place. It’s no biggy, just trying to work out what to do before the bits land, but they shouldn’t be on the doorstep when I get home tonight so we’ll see. The last MTB style hydros I got came with everything attached I hadn’t thought they would come separate hmm.

No way to know if stuff comes separate, my separate ones where OEM I think.

But why would the hose not fit? Take off lever, be careful not to loose all the oil, thread through fork, cut off a small bit of hose (I use the yellow blocks and a fresh cutter blade) use new olive (not always necessary) reattach.
Have brakes, maybe.

any bike shops in london with yokozuna's compressionless housing available to install?

yeah, but you know how it is with beaters, they tend to get upgraded until they become your favorite.
also, I kinda like to repair stuff.
but I deffo reckon that getting mt200's would save me a lot of grief

Get some BMX brake outers, just as good, 1/3 the price.

I have a dead TRP HyRd caliper. It's making a plasticky noise when actuating the lever, as if the bladder was broken. Nothing weird happened to it, it did a bit less than 3k km and just stopped working. Out of warranty, of course.

I would like to see if it's repairable in hopes of selling the calipers as a pair, but I can't find any good tutorial about it. Should I just empty it, open everything (pistons and tank) and go from there?

I'm almost losing my nerves on a Sram Rival (mech) Hydr brake system, where I don't find a good solution for. Tried all tricks I new, but still not 100% OK with brake function. Is there a magic trick that I don't know about, or do I have to accept that Sram Rival hydraulic braking is shit compared to Campagnolo and Shimano? Calipers are non-bleeding edge, post mount calipers.

Problem: depending on the reach adjustment of the lever (with the 2.5mm grub screw under the lever), the bite point changes. If a adjust the reach relatively close to the bars (where I want the levers to be) there occurs some +- 2cm of free travel, before any braking action occurs. This just feels shit when riding. When I adjust the reach further away of the bars, in a more extreme position, this free travel seems to be less. At that position, the braking feels like I want it to feel. Fast, not numb, as if you're in control without a 2 cm lag witch each brake action. But lever is not reachable because of the extreme position. What I want is this braking, but with a shorter reach.

Effective braking power is ok. It's all about the free stroke / travel of the lever that I want to avoid. With Shimano/Campagnolo hydraulics, I've sometimes solved this by pressurizing the system just a little by pressing the syringes while closing the brake port. But these Sram non-bleeding edge f*ckers don't have a brake port it seems.

What I've tried:

• multiple bleeds, following the exact instructions from Sram manual (last time with lever reach as close to bars as possible)
  
• removing wheel, pressing levers a bit to get the brake pads closer to the rotors => makes it a bit better, but not enough
  
• new brake pads /rotors
  
• ...
  
  

Eternal gratitude for who can help here :)

Get shimano.

Are the levers returning properly? I recently replaced the master cylinder pistons in mine and the new spring was a bit longer than the old one, whether it had just got really compressed or if it had been updated, who knows. They work a shit load better now. They do simply work much better with the reach wind out a long way, because physics.

I also got rid of the Rival calipers and put Hopes on instead.

Yes, the return is fine. Also, it's been like this since new. Is it normal that they work better / worse with different reach positions? When I put the lever in the most extreme position (away from bars) it even puts the pistons out so much that brake pads clamp the rotor. On another bike i have campa record, don't think brake performance is affected when changing reach.

@snottyotter seriously considering that tbh if I cant solve this

Is it normal that they work better / worse with different reach positions?

Yes, because you need the piston to push x volume of fluid, but you've only got a finite space to do this before the lever hits the bar. Wind the reach in, the lever contacts the bar before the piston has pushed enough fluid.
What you want is bite point control, which Rival don't have. Then you'd can balance reach and bite point.

All this is irrelevant though, as they shift gears so badly that you won't be going fast enough to ever require the brakes anyway...

😂 so shit brakes, what I was expecting.

Live with it or upgrade than

Or get bigger hands?

.

1 Attachment

Where to get them?

From the BBC

1 Attachment

You can overfill the brakes. Instead of the normal bleed block use anything slightly smaller (Or pads a bit used and a spacer) . You'll have almost no room for the pistons to retract, so better have perfect rotors and a perfectly centered caliper.
Pretty common problem with girl racers, another way is having new pads all the time.

That's a good tip, thanks. At the moment, I'm advancing the pistons a tiny bit without wheel in bike, to get the pads a bit closer to the rotors. But when pads wear, distance get tiny bit bigger and I have to re-advance the pistons a bit all over and over again.

Am I correct that with overfilling, I get the same result, but with the difference that distance between pad and rotor will remain the same regardless of pad wear?

Anything like that you do will be temporary. The self-adjustment will only kick in when the lever travel is back to normal, and is determined by the design of the piston seals.

(there's a business opportunity for aftermarket short reach piston seals, if anyone enjoys setting fire to money)

Having issues understanding flat-mount (I think partly ideologically, I never got what was wrong with post-mount).

Trying to fit an XT post-mount caliper with 160mm rotor to a Rockshox Rudy fork, can anyone tell me which adapter I need? It looks to me like they use a rear flat-mount standard on the fork?

You got sold a dud.

Flat mount as much as they promised dont require an adaptor does however requires one on the front!

That's all you need.

You can run one on the rear though without one, what an amazing design eh?

Edit: I've always been vocal against flat mount, IS and/or Post is still better

Hmm, not sure what you mean sold a dud. I'm trying to mount a PM caliper to an FM fork, so definitely need some kind of adaptation.

The flat mount they use on the RS Rudy looks like the spec of a flat mount rear rather than front (ie. 34mm spacing between two through holes). Ima order some different options and see what goes.