Hydraulic brakes

SurfinEbike

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Region
USA
City
Huntington beach
Hey anyone know of hydraulic brake conversion kit that works well with higher speeds (30-35MPH) that won't cost me an arm and leg?
 
hybrid kit.

I have this on my tandem, we get the tandem up to 28-30mph a lot and have not had any issue with these. 1000% better than the original cable brakes. especially stopping near 400lbs with me, the wife and the bike combined.


I will say they are a good quality kit, not great, but they have worked well for 1,200 miles on my tandem.

BTW this is the same hybrid kit that Bolton E-bikes sells branded with their name,
 
Hey anyone know of hydraulic brake conversion kit that works well with higher speeds (30-35MPH) that won't cost me an arm and leg?
Shimano dore work great and not too bad on price the 4 piston are nice single finger brakes. we have the 4 piston on our e tandem and we mountain bike with them. for those speeds you want good heat dissipation.

 
I bought a set of those Juintech brakes for my daughter's bike with the intention of upgrading her ebike, but she went and lost the things before I could. I did have the opportunity to inspect them (I bought them from Bolton and they were labeled/sold as Juin Tech at the time) and they struck me as being of surprisingly high quality.

But because of the mishap of the missing brakes (someday we'll find them in a box somewhere) I replaced them with Magura MT5's which are head/shoulders better, but run about $125 per axle. Now... the Juin Techs are $168 and only include calipers whereas the Maguras provide the whole shebang with calipers, cables and levers, which gives you I think the biggest benefit of hydros: No cable maintenance. You can't have that with hybrids like the Juins.

A more fair comparison to the Juins would be the 2-pot Magura MT4 at about $100 per axle. Also, you can find them as take-offs on Ebay. The set I bought was about $70 per axle and since they were take-offs I didn't need to do squat with the cable lengths. Thats cheaper than the Juins if you can find a deal like that.

Bike-Discount.de in Germany will ship them to you in the US for a total of 160.39 € shipping included, which translates to $187... for a big step up from the Juins. Buy some extra pads from them while you are at it as they are way cheaper direct from Germany to help soak up that one time shipping cost.

RoseBikes.com also in Germany has them sold singly, and ends up at about the same price for a pair. Even EBay wants about double this for the same brakesets.

Lastly there are these Shimanos. Hard to find right now. Not exactly top drawer but I know lots of people who have bought them and no complaints. Good basic hydros for under $120 for a full set. With cutouts too. Look over on Electro Bike World for the listing but they are not in stock at the moment.

 
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I had the mt4's came on my bike and worked well. but after going to the single finger deore on our tandem I fell in love with the ease of use. so I put 4 piston xt
 
I bought a set of those Juintech brakes for my daughter's bike with the intention of upgrading her ebike, but she went and lost the things before I could. I did have the opportunity to inspect them (I bought them from Bolton and they were labeled/sold as Juin Tech at the time) and they struck me as being of surprisingly high quality.

But because of the mishap of the missing brakes (someday we'll find them in a box somewhere) I replaced them with Magura MT5's which are head/shoulders better, but run about $125 per axle. Now... the Juin Techs are $168 and only include calipers whereas the Maguras provide the whole shebang with cables and calipers, which gives you I think the biggest benefit of hydros: No cable maintenance. You can't have that with hybrids like the Juins.

A more fair comparison to the Juins would be the 2-pot Magura MT4 at about $100 per axle. Also, you can find them as take-offs on Ebay. The set I bought was about $70 per axle and since they were take-offs I didn't need to do squat with the cable lengths. Thats cheaper than the Juins if you can find a deal like that.

Bike-Discount.de in Germany will ship them to you in the US for a total of 160.39 € shipping included, which translates to $187... for a big step up from the Juins. Buy some extra pads from them while you are at it as they are way cheaper direct from Germany to help soak up that one time shipping cost.

RoseBikes.com also in Germany has them sold singly, and ends up at about the same price for a pair. Even EBay wants about double this for the same brakesets.

Lastly there are these Shimanos. Hard to find right now. Not exactly top drawer but I know lots of people who have bought them and no complaints. Good basic hydros for under $120 for a full set. With cutouts too. Look over on Electro Bike World for the listing but they are not in stock at the moment.

the Juintech‘s I bought came with the calipers, discs, and brackets for the 203mm disks. Bolton sells them as the calipers only, amazon sells them as the full kit.
 
The Juintech hybrid hydraulic brakes are also made in a version by Yokozuna who have both two-piston and four-piston versions. Keep in mind these Juintech design brakes have the stopping advantages of hydraulic action at the caliper end (where your wheel/rotor is) but they don't have the automatic adjustment advantages we usually associate with hydraulic brake systems. For that you need a master cylinder and most/all full hydro brake systems for bicycles will have that auto adjustment feature with the master cylinder at the lever end (where you hand is).

There is at least one hybrid hydro brake system made by TRP called Hy/Rd that has a mater cylinder (at the caliper end, kind of chunky looking) and they have the automatic adjustment feature. If you don't have that feature, adjusting the pad distance is not difficult, and is not required all that often. If you're used to doing it with your mechanical/cable disc brakes anyway, it's the same easy occasional turn of an adjustment knob on the Juintech or it's Yokozuna or Bolton versions, to keep the pads at a correct distance from the rotors. That's the thing you don't have to do with full hydro brakes and with TRP Hy/Rd hybrids because they adjust automatically every time you use them.

It's good these hybrid options exist; they stop well in my experience of frequent use on several bikes and feel powerful like good quality full hydro brakes, but it can require choosing your brake levers carefully. Some brake levers pull more cable than others and some levers therefore work well with a particular hybrid/hydro actuator arm on your hybrid brake and some may not. Same deal as when you match cable levers to cable/mechanical discs--you have to make sure they're compatible. It you're handy and a resourceful bike mechanic (like @mjeds probably is, and m@Robertson certainly is), it's fine to experiment and find out if your current levers work. Many probably would be fine. You can use work-arounds (there are some) if they don't, or you may end up buying/installing different levers...

However, it should be noted that installing a full hydro brake system is usually not complicated, not expensive, and a good bike shop will probably be better at installing a full hydro (calipers/hose/levers) on your bike than they would be sussing out a hybrid system with its lever peculiarities and mechanical advantage calculations, ha! ;-)

The reasons hybrid hydro/cable systems are rare is not because they're not powerful brakes (they are) but because 1) full hydro systems are better in most ways even if brake feel is the same or almost the same (depending on set-up as mentioned) so why not go full hydro if you don't have a pressing reason to use a hybrid, and 2) because few people have those pressing reasons to use the hybrid system--it's usually a preference for a particular cable lever they want to use while at the same time preferring not to use a cable-disc caliper. Those people are rare (I'm one although I have several full hydro systems in use too) partly because lots of them prefer cable-discs anyway--usually out of concern about field servicing hydraulic brakes on a long tour (a common objection to hydro discs). Or because resourceful traditional bike mechanics can be reluctant to learn an entirely new system like hydraulic brakes. I was one such reluctant but I taught myself (hydro and full hydro maintenance) and it turns out to be plenty doable and I enjoy it. Meantime, I fully agree with the basic premise of this thread that if you want to improve your disc braking, get some hydro on board.
 
the Juintech‘s I bought came with the calipers, discs, and brackets for the 203mm disks. Bolton sells them as the calipers only, amazon sells them as the full kit.
The link you provided above is calipers-only. I checked the Juin Tech store on Amazon and they do sell kits for rotors, adapters and calipers... but they are 160mm rotors and adapters. All of their kits are 160mm. So apparently the bike parts shortage has nixed any other options.

 
The link you provided above is calipers-only. I checked the Juin Tech store on Amazon and they do sell kits for rotors, adapters and calipers... but they are 160mm rotors and adapters. All of their kits are 160mm. So apparently the bike parts shortage has nixed any other options.


not sure I bought mine back in March, and the link I grabbed from a quick search to answer the OPs question.

I got 203mm disks, calipers, and a variety of adaptors that appear to be for 160mm - 203mm for the calipers. I didn't need any of them as I already had 203mm discs on the bike.


went back and looked, the link I provided is the same as yours and is the rotors and calipers: though they are 160mm, the 203mm option appears to be removed.

Product description​

Juin Tech M1 Mountain E-bike Bicycle Bike Hydraulic Disc Brake Calipers
Innovation!Have both hand-feeling of full hydraulic & cable actuated hydraulic
The Juin Tech M1 isn't a straightforward mechanical disc brake though, it's a hybrid or cable-operated hydraulic.
It's an appealing solution for anyone looking to gain some of the much vaunted advantages of hydraulic braking - increased power and better modulation - without needing to replace an entire groupset.
Caliper: Forged Aluminum
Rotor size :160mm x 2pcs

Compatibility: MTB / E-bike etc.
For PM/IS Mount system use
For V-brake and shifter/brake lever use
Using non-corrosive and high stability mineral oil
Dual-Piston brake caliper
High stability stainless steel rotors whose material from Japan
Color: Black / Gray available
Weight:approx.142grams/per caliper
Juin Tech patent.
For Road/ MTB / E-bike / CX / Gravel etc. use
 
The reasons hybrid hydro/cable systems are rare is not because they're not powerful brakes (they are) but because 1) ... <snip>
I will add another reason to this. If I'm such a big booster of full hydros, why did I buy the Juin Techs? My daughter and son-in-law live in the EU, and their ebikes had mechanical brakes. Neither are bike mechanics. The Juin Techs gave me a much easier path towards walking thru a caliper swap via a video call. I was abandoning the no-2-ways-about-it superiority of the full hydro system that @stw already did a great job of describing above.

In the end, the calipers got delivered (overseas) but misplaced, and I ended up visiting daughter and family over there. I put MT5's on daughter and son-in-law's bikes while I was there. So happy ending. This was Feb 2020 so just before everything went nuts. MT5's were $79 each back then, bought from German shops. Maybe again, someday.

While the Juin Techs are neat and looked to be of surprisingly high quality, I think if you buy smart you can get a full set of hydros for about the same money.

On a couple of my bikes I have been lazy. Magura delivers the kit completely assembled and bled, and while I can do a cut/bleed job just fine, you can fudge it. I looped and zip tied excess cable along the perimeter of my front rack on my Mongoose Envoy, and under the handlebar basket frame of my Surly BFD. Unless you stick your head down there and look you won't spot it.

These can be very handy if you have frame-brazed cable loops on your bike. Eliminates the need to cut the cable to get them thru the fittings. Same exact fittings are much cheaper from Aliexpress.com

 
went back and looked, the link I provided is the same as yours and is the rotors and calipers: though they are 160mm, the 203mm option appears to be removed.
Yeah you're right. I didn't see the picture (not the primary one) showing rotors and adapters. And the description "caliper set" reinforced that. My bad.
 
hybrid kit.

I have this on my tandem, we get the tandem up to 28-30mph a lot and have not had any issue with these. 1000% better than the original cable brakes. especially stopping near 400lbs with me, the wife and the bike combined.


I will say they are a good quality kit, not great, but they have worked well for 1,200 miles on my tandem.

BTW this is the same hybrid kit that Bolton E-bikes sells branded with their name,
+1 for this kit. i put it on both my and my son's ebikes and they are a great improvement on both. 👍
 
Anyone have these or any heard of them?

Tektro HD-E725 E-Bike Hydraulic Disc Brake 4-Piston Caliper with Sensor Control, MH2009​

 
Okay so Higo yellow (3pin) is more rare.
As far as motors are concerned, its the yellow Higos that are the most common. Thats because Bafang uses the yellow ones on all their motors, and other mfrs have adopted this, because that means Bafang aftermarket parts fit their motors too. Same deal with throttles. And displays with the green plug. Its become a bit of a nonstandard standard.

The solution to this can be rather tidy but you need to know who to buy from. This site used to make custom Higo cables for me for my AWD builds (splitting brake signals to two motors, splitting output of one PAS sensor, and red to yellow Higo adapters). After a fashion he put an adapter into his regular stock.


Check out his 'splitters and Y cables' area

Beyond that you just have to dig and occasionally find an adapter. For a short time Luna has a short red-yellow cable adapter in their bargain bin and I scooped up 8 of them just in case :D Also, California Ebike now sells BBSHD wiring harnesses wired directly for red brake cutoffs.
 
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Anyone have these or any heard of them?

Tektro HD-E725 E-Bike Hydraulic Disc Brake 4-Piston Caliper with Sensor Control, MH2009​

I think the chances that an AliExpress site is selling genuine Tektro brakesets is between slim and none, and Slim just left town.

Months ago, Tektro shut down all new orders until something like 2022 because they are so overloaded. You are starting to see ebike manufacturers come out with new brakesets on their bikes because its either use some new off-brand or shut down production. So is some bozo on Ali selling real ones in 2021? Place your bets.

If the brakes are genuine, then they probably utilize the Tektro Type 17 rotor, which is 2.3mm thick and awesome. I use them with my Maguras. But normal rotors are 1.8mm thick which means those Tektro brakesets cannot use any other rotor and MUST use the Type 17. With Maguras, meant to run 2.1mm Magura brand rotors, you can stuff the T17's in and they will work (an excellent upgrade made better by the fact the T17's are cheap @ about $25 for a 203). Magura rotors are at replacement spec at 1.8mm so conventional rotors will work in a pinch but you will overextend the pistons as thin rotors get thinner which can cause leaks.
 
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