Anyone know anything about disc brakes?

Haha wtf?

So, my trusty Deore front brake with 160mm icetec rotor and organic pads has completely given up.
It only squeals, hellishly loud and doesn't stop at all.
Ridden for nearly 2 years without problems. Time for a pad/disc swap?

Or seize the opportunity to upgrade to something more tasty?

Figure out what's up with it first.

New bike time

2 years without changing pads?

Have you check the pads wear?

Pads are worn, but not completely gone, from what I can see. Gotta dismantle the whole thing and have a closer look.

@Howard or that. I've been lusting for one of them Omnium CXCs anyway...

banjo thingy

This is in the thing in the lever end, right? That's usually attached to the caliper on other brakes?

yes on some calipers...

a banjo fitting:

Thanks, hydraulics are a new area for me. You managed to fit a shimano caliper to a hylex lever I think? Did it work out ok?

Yes I have tried three different shimano calipers now:
old xtr one -> https://www.lfgss.com/comments/11998764/. worked fine until seals started leaking (it is a old caliper, bought used)

flatmount br-r505 works really well best performing brake until now.

and I recently tried a br-m595 for the front:

a pretty bog-standard shimano caliper. It works but needs some maintenance (disc is howling...)

Hylex calipers use 21mm pistons

Old shimano (aluminium cup with black plastic inside) are also 21mm so should be a match.

Most new shimano have 22mm pistons (white plastic ceramic or "glass fibre phenolic" material), so I guess you lose gain a little modulation and get a more on-off feel pads run closer to the rotor.

So basically any shimano caliper should work (except saint which have weird/4 pistons)

Saint and Zee are downhill stuff hence 4 pots instead of 2... ;)

Yes. But if they use the same levers as other shimano, I guess they would work with a hylex lever as well.

AFAIK the levers are different as they are designed to displace more fluid compared to the regular ones. Hence you can use a 4 pot lever to actuate front and rear dual pots calipers via a splitter but not the other way around.

I've mixed and matched most shimano levers and calipers with no problem. Even dismantled levers and swapped the blades between them. Zee and Saint don't push any more fluid than others. I guess the overall surface area of the four smaller pistons is the same / very similar to two larger ones.

great!
so...
tldr: Most shimano calipers will work with hylex levers. see below

Hope have joined finally:

1 Attachment

Define worn.

Many other thing can cause this, sticky piston, calipers not lined up properly, contaminated pads, etc.

Higher end shimano stuff has ceramic pistons no?

@coventry_eagle @chiroshi
Hose design is where you lose modulation when you mix and match. If I remember right, Bh59 is a small bore pressure hose, wheras the BH90 is a larger/volume bore, hence either loss of modulation or bite if you mix and match. Old saint's/Zee/XT 4 pot stuff used to be fitted with volume hoses.

I remember having a customer who had issues that his brakes were losing power when using it.

It transpired he was using a different hose than the Shimano one, so when applying the brakes, the hose literally swelled up the entire way.

Pretty sure bh90 is more current and is being used across the range from the top end XTR/Saints to the lower Deore stuff. This is from experience as I've not come across BH59 in the 3 disc setups I've encountered - Deore, SLX and Saint.

Saint lever from 2012 push more oil: at 2.15:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iPEMDigIGoM

and piston area is larger: Zee, Saint: 16mm small, 18mm large = 20% area increase

thread on mtbr.com

Difference between hylex 21mm and shimano 22mm = 10% area increase

yea, this has been gone over before. Someone wanted to attach Zee four pots to their Ultegra levers or something bonkers.

More Hylex lever stuff:
Reading a bit on Sheldon Brown´s page it seem that a setup with more mechanical advantage (hylex lever to newish shimano caliper: +10%) gives a softer lever feel and more modulation. Maybe that´s why I like the setup with the flat-mount caliper.

The trade-off is pads run closer to the rotor so more zing noises and/or levers bottom out on bars .

http://www.sheldonbrown.com/cantilever-geometry.html

does mechanical advantage apply to hydraulic brakes?