Non-hydraulic braking

Keen to know if anyone is using non-hydraulic brakes on their off road bikes, and if you are, what are considered the best. I know Klampers are supposed to be good, but they're also spendy! Talk to me.

Avid BB7s are the poor man's choice of cable discs vs. Klampers, but in my experience BB7s have been excellent - even used successfully for an Alps trip. However I'm not a serious black run DHer, more blues and cruise with the odd red. It's definitely proper off road though! And they've had a lot of UK cross country use with no complaints. They only pull one side of the caliper in, with a static pad inboard, but are pretty easy to tweak when needed.

For best results use compressionless outers, neatly cut with good ferrules, and decent pads such as Uberbike Race Matrix.

I’ve ridden Glentress Black and other similar stuff at Comrie etc on bb7s. I’m using hydros now but kinda tempted to go back to cable discs. I can see me doing so if I have another piston failure or something.

Compressionless outers are a must imo. Funny that Paul advises against it with Klampers as it’ll make them too on/off!

I did really consider Klampers a wee while ago, ended up buying Paul cantis for my Raleigh Twenty instead though. I can definitely see me spending the money on Klampers as opposed to Hopes or something.

The venn diagram of people who say cable discs cannot compare to hydros and people who whinge about their hydros rubbing and leaking is a fucking circle and I will not be convinced otherwise!

Edit: I tried TRP Spyres and hated them. Couldn’t get the pad adjusters to stay where I set them, they always rattled themselves out as I rode so I’d start a ride with lovely lever feel and end it with the lever coming all the way back to the handlebar.

got bb7's for mtb and jump bike when i built them, 16 years combined usage later and still running beautifully, still working as well as the day i bought them. mtb's seen plenty of mud and wet conditions. only had to change pads in that time.
can't fault them

The venn diagram of people who say cable discs cannot compare to hydros and people who whinge about their hydros rubbing and leaking is a fucking circle and I will not be convinced otherwise!

So you're totally cool with constant adjustment due to the mad cable pull to pad wear ratio?

Didn’t take long did it!

🤣

+1 for BB7s over Spyres.

Yes. There is nothing more satisfying than turning a bb7 dial the right way first time, or so I am told...

Edit: I tried TRP Spyres and hated them. Couldn’t get the pad adjusters to stay where I set them, they always rattled themselves out as I rode so I’d start a ride with lovely lever feel and end it with the lever coming all the way back to the handlebar.

My experience is the absolute opposite. BB7s would be adjusted to have good lever feel, then within an hour of riding would barely scrub any speed off with the lever back as far as it would go. Spyres were great, get them set up properly and they were good for months.

Fair enough. I can only speak to my experience.

I do think though that I’ve read that the pad adjusters were an issue on early Spyres and they then added some loctite to the bolt and that fixed it.

MTB BB7s on two bikes here - one with drops + Tektro RL520 levers runs lovely (despite the long cable to rear with full-length outer, cable ties everywhere and a bend before the brake that is really too tight); the other is a PITA, requiring constant adjustment (set up with flat bars & levers and by the book with much better cables, etc.). Maybe Avid's QC is crap and you have to get lucky?

Reason behind this is that I'm putting together a groad bike. It's going to be the complete opposite of my road bike, so no electronic gears, minimal carbon etc... got me thinking, do I need hydro brakes? I've been looking at Juin Tech and TRP HY/RD.

Cable operated hydraulic calipers are an evolutionary dead end.

Personally, I don’t understand why you’d purposefully choose to not have hydraulic brakes. They perform better and require less maintenance once set up.

Maybe Avid's QC is crap and you have to get lucky?

There’s always sus looking sellers doing then mega cheap on eBay etc, I dunno if they are all out fakes or the ones that get rejected at QC going out the back door. Kinda suspect the latter and that these ones are the root of much of the issues. I once bought a pair of callipers from one of these listings and one was fine, the other really lacked bite. I stripped them down and I can’t remember exactly but I found two washers where there should be one in the one that wasn’t really working.

Cable operated hydraulic calipers are an evolutionary dead end.

I guess they were for people with mechanical brifters that wanted hydro discs. I really don’t get people that spec Them on a flat bar build or anything that could have had full hydro.

They seem like the worst of both worlds.

Could be. But the ones that are shit were sealed, boxed units from Wiggle/CRC a few years ago! The other, good ones were 2nd hand from on here.

I will pull the shit ones apart and check then. Of course, it could all be user error...

Still, I haven't died though.

I use mechanical disc brakes on my Diverge. They are Tektros and they are pretty shit but I have survived using them for the last four years including riding the Traka for the last two years which has some pretty long, fast descents.

They do require regular attention, mainly winding the non-moving pad closer to the disc to ensure you can apply a decent amount of power to the disc surface.

On Spyres / Spykes think the only way to get them nice is tiny bit of blue loctite on the pad adjusters + compressionless housing.

Ever tried Revers? Never ridden but the sinful bastards at PX have got the Havit on discount at the moment https://planetx.co.uk/products/rever-havit-flat-mount-dual-movement-disc-caliper

Cable operated hydraulic calipers are an evolutionary dead end.

I dunno; aside from working with cable brifters, the tiny contained hydraulic system basically needs zero maintenance, right? And the major drawback of cable discs is the frequency of adjusting for pad wear. Seems like a pretty good idea to me; I was a hydraulic service technician for about as many years as I was a bike mechanic, and IMO hydraulic brakes on a bike can fuck right off. Hybrid calipers don't count because you never need to see the oil. Cables are lovely. You can see whatever's wrong with them at a glance; no problems can hide.

Genuine question having never used hybrid brakes. Are they really that low maintenance? I guess there's less hydraulic stuff to go wrong and cables are a breeze to mess about with in comparison. It's all a dark art to me.

The point of adding the hydraulics with hybrid calipers is the niftiest element of hydraulic brakes - the self-adjustment.

Never had a bike with them, but I've worked on them, and they seem pretty good to me. Not sure if you're meant to ever change the fluid

Yeah that seems like a bonus. I have TRP Spyres on my gravel bike which work pretty well when they're set up correctly but do need pretty regular maintenance to adjust for wear. The cheapo Deore hydraulic brake I have on my other bike is more powerful (flat bar rather than drops though) and really is fit and forget. Having said that, if anything goes go wrong I'm much more confident messing about with cable brakes than the hydro one.

Yep, hydro is all well and good until something goes wrong and then it can piss you off hard

In my limited experience with hybrid calipers, the Juin Tech R1s didn't self adjust, there was a small dial for that.

Still, they were very easy to live with.