If you have followed my Blog over the many years you will know I have always used Shimano disc brakes excluding my old Cube e mtb's which had Magura fitted. I have Shimano fitted on my mtb's, road bikes and gravel bikes. I have spare mineral oil and olives etc to keep them working. I also have loads of spare brake pads as many of the different models all use the same shaped pad. I have only ever had one problem many years ago with Shimano disc brakes - XTR lever seal failed and had to buy a replacement lever.
Now my new Specialized Creo 2 come with Sram groupset inc the brakes. I have not used Sram disc brakes before but have read loads of different stories about them, some good'ish and a lot of not so good. The lever feel is totally different along with the biting point. The power is also totally different and with me using Shimano on all my other bikes it was taking some getting used to. One thing a lot of riders say is the cheaper Sram road disc rotors are poor so I decided to swap them with some of my older Shimano Dura Ace rotors and things were slightly better. After around 200 miles of mud cutting paste rides the original pads have started to bed in and the brakes have improved. I was thinking of swapping the calipers to Hope RS4+ but after some discussions with riders who have used and fitted them I decided not to go down that path at the mo.
Anyway back to the Shimano rotors, I have them fitted to all my bikes / wheels sets and spare wheels. I decided to go for the latest Dura Ace 900 model in 160mm (from Wolf Cycles £81.98 inc 48hr p&p) and put them onto my Creo 1 road bike. I took the rotors off that and put them onto my Creo 2 Hunt wheels The ones from the Creo 2 went back onto my DT Swiss 700c wheelset which are now on my Creo 1 gravel bike. The ones from there went back onto my spare 650b Creo 1 wheels set. That means I have three generations of Dura Ace rotors on my bikes and older Ultegra rotors on my Cannondale Synapse Neo and spare 650b wheelset.
I have also bought some Absolute Black brake pads from the Creo 2 but I am not going to fit them yet and wait and see if the braking improves over the next month or so of winter riding. I was going to go for the SwissStop Exotherm pads which I have fitted to my road Creo but opted for the Absolute Black ones for a change.
I also fitted s new bell to my Creo 1 & 2 gravel bikes so other users on the lines will hopefully here me better when coming from behind! I also washed, dried and lubed both bikes and charged them up ready for some more miles in the saddle.
I have a new pair of more comfortable grips to fit onto the Trek Marlin+ but I ran out of time.
Enjoy and hopefully more soon.
No comments:
Post a Comment