This thread makes me never want to use hydraulic brakes! Seems a pain.

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Washed up footy player turned Triathlete.

when i have tried fittings other than SRAM's stealthamajig and olive, i end up with epic fail. and that's even if i use avid needles/olives in an AXS system. no can do. i learned that the hard way. so, i have invested in a bulk buy of stealthamajigs/olives, and that's why i need bulk hose. if i have banjo bolts, and everything else, shimano and SRAM, i just need the hose.

there is terrific lack of knowledge and guidance on all of this. the brands are telling us we're all moving to hydraulic, for every use case. okay. you and i saw all of this, 3 or 4 years ago, and you know my posture on it: we can argue over the value of it, but the reality of it is apparent. it's going to be hydraulic. every brake on every kind of bike. okay. but the roll out of this has been terrible. as bad as i've seen in the bike business in my 40 years in it. the bike brands said, "we want hydraulic." so, the suppliers supplied hydraulic. but, when it comes to, "how do we work on it; how do we maintain the capacity to adjust the bikes to fit with it; where to we get the parts and sub-assemblies; what is cross-compatible with what; epic effing fail on behalf of this industry.

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

I don't know, but it may be that the AXS stuff is "stealthamajig only"? I now that was the case of the MTB brakes after they introduced it, although they also state it can be used on older models, just not vice-versa.

Yeah...this hydraulic stuff is a bit frustrating, especially the high-pressure disc stuff. It makes me appreciate the "simplicity" of the low-pressure Magura stuff used on their hydraulic rim brakes. Inexpensive single-wall plastic tubing and only an external olive (no needle required), so even if you have to cut the olive off, it's ONLY the width of the olive (i.e. less length loss)...although, IME one can quite often just pull the olive off the end of the tubing

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http://bikeblather.blogspot.com/

hydraulic brakes can be a pain. and i guess they are right now. but they don't have to be. there are two technologies that are coming straight at us, they're here, the industry has demanded them, we have them, and they're tubeless and hydraulic. this thread is an outward expression of the gap between the knowledge and products we need, and the knowledge and products we have. behind the scenes i'm talking to brands about this.

on the one hand i'm certainly not the right guy to help solve this. one the other hand, i'm sort of the average joe, i ride bikes, i've got these bikes, i have to build them, work on them, and when i run into trouble i assume other people will run into trouble as well. so, i do expect that i'll be spending a fair bit of time writing about this, making videos and the like, because this thread just shows you the gap between the tech as it is presented to us, and the real world use of the tech.

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

Yes, slowman is right. This is it works with Sram. Just built up several bikes with the Stealthamjig and really not possible to re-use the olive and barb. And you need to cut the hose about a cm to replace and set ip the new olive and barb.
But the bleeding of the Sram’s is much easier, faster and less hassle then Shimano’s bleeding. The easy and quickness sits in the fact that the syringes connect and screw in to the lever and caliper.


Jeroen

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Owner at TRIPRO, The Netherlands

Interesting...I have the SRAM hydraulic rim brakes on my road bike. Just last year I needed to replace the carbon handlebar (w/internal routing) on the bike due to it being cracked in a minor crash. Additionally, the rear brake line also feeds internally in the frame. So, this meant having to cut the barbs/olives off of the hoses, and then they'll both be too short. Obviously, I could re-use the longer rear hose on the front (which I did) and I only had to source a replacement hose (w/banjo fitting on the lever end) for the front brake.

At the time, I saw the Stealthamajig option for the needle/olive configuration and figured "Hey, that's a good idea for if/when I need to do this again...I can just unscrew the olive and do the re-routing". Never thought that the olive ends up crimped onto the needle anyway. So, now I'm left with the question above...why did they do this? I'm not seeing the advantage over a regular needle/olive setup if it can't be "re-worked".

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http://bikeblather.blogspot.com/

So far I've managed to avoid bleeding SRAM, but the comparison between Campag and Shimano bleeding is huge. Campag syringes are better, the threading into the caliper avoids fuss, no plastic bags.
Actually have a SRAM bike to build in the next day or two so will see how that compares to Campag.

Shimano bleed process just makes me think bike hydros are an immature technology.

Thankfully, there are aftermarket bleed kits that allow for Sram style bleeding of Shimano systems. Pretty hard to go back.

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Tech writer/support on this here site. FIST school instructor and certified bike fitter. Formerly at Diamondback Bikes, LeMond Fitness, FSA, TiCycles, etc.
Coaching and bike fit - http://source-e.net/ Cyclocross blog - https://crosssports.net/ BJJ instruction - https://ballardbjj.com/

this along with all the other hydraulic joys in this thread, makes me think of https://xkcd.com/927/




and then I sing along with Maurice Chevalier, I'm glad I'm not young anymore..
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_RZEj7t1EaA

Cables will be good enough for me ;-)

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"It is a good feeling for old men who have begun to fear failure, any sort of failure, to set a schedule for exercise and stick to it. If an aging man can run a distance of three miles, for instance, he knows that whatever his other failures may be, he is not completely wasted away." Romain Gary, SI interview

There are, missed that. To what bleed kits are you referring to?

Thanks,

Jeroen

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Owner at TRIPRO, The Netherlands

There are a metric crap-ton of aftermarket "generic" bleed kits that come with fittings for both Shimano and Sram (Campy/Magura as well, fwiw). Pretty much all of them utilize the two syringe method, for the obvious reason that it's just easier and faster. You will find a bunch of them on Ali Express and on Amazon. As a plus, the kits tend to be pretty darn inexpensive.

Personally, I'm using a kit that I pieced together from the best parts out of a couple of the generic kits, plus some actual Shimano branded bits. I have a pretty close to identical kit assembled for Sram bleeds. As I've cobbled stuff together (and don't actually remember what came from where) I can't give a solid recommendation for a kit, but all three that I more or less randomly ordered were pretty solid in their own right.

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Tech writer/support on this here site. FIST school instructor and certified bike fitter. Formerly at Diamondback Bikes, LeMond Fitness, FSA, TiCycles, etc.
Coaching and bike fit - http://source-e.net/ Cyclocross blog - https://crosssports.net/ BJJ instruction - https://ballardbjj.com/

Ya it’s easy and inexpensive to piece a kit together, this is my travel kit covers shimano,trp,Magura &sram.