Hydraulic Shimano Dura-Ace Brake Lever Leaked? UPDATED!

Why does it have a big donkey boner on top?

Even though I use that hand position often while riding, putting a full size donkey boner there to hold onto seems a bit overkill. I don’t get how Formula can make the R1 brake so tidy and Shimano cant make a road lever without the need for equine manhood sized tumors.

REALLY!!! Does a road bike REALLY need disc brakes. I love the progression of things in the bizness. It has to happen. I put this “road disc brake” idea in the same bucket as the electronic shifting buzz. DI2/UI 2/ Campy electro are all solutions to a problem that really does not exist.

i keep shaking my head over why hydro and not mechanical. i totally understand why hydro on a mtb. my mtb riding greatly improved with hydro but i cant see why these designers feel that road riders need the same power as mountain riders out of their disc brakes. i think making mechanical more powerful than they currently are is perfect for a road disc application.

i think what splicha said is spot on. a shop is going to have to work harder not only in terms of servicing and set up but also explaining to the customer why they are being charged for the work being done.

i guess this plea is falling on deaf ears if that picture is to be believed.

i can defend electric shifting and its merits. but i cant see the true value of hydro road disc brakes

Lever position looks totally wrong for hydraulic. Check out the lever pivot placement on Hayes or Avid mtb brakes – then refer to this.
And position of lever to brake in the hoods – almost impossible.
This is a hoax for sure

I knew I’d seen that lever shape somewhere before.

@Gaz these brake levers are real! Checkout the user guide at the Factor website http://www.factor001.com/the-factor-001

I dunno… so what if it isn’t UCI kosher? Not every bike sold is going to be raced in UCI events. We aren’t all racers. If disc brakes become popular on road bikes, UCI might come around and let them race.

Take a tip from Volagi. They are selling bunches of bikes.

They ought to make a lever-bar unit with the pistons integrated into the handlebar.

Anyone else catch the irony of the headline?

@Steve M
HA! didnt notice it until you pointed it out! thats awesome

Disc road cannot come fast enough for me. Actual braking in the rain, replacing rotors is much easier than worn out rims, no more carbon brake pads that last 10 rides on carbon rims and still over-heat and explode the rims leading to long arguments with my LBS for warranty replacement. No more trying to adjust for 3 slightly different rim widths and changing brake pads for different rims.

“…But is this technology even needed?” Well, are 10 speed cassettes really needed? Couldn’t we make do with 8 or 7? Are tubeless tires really needed? Are CF, Aluminum, or Ti frames really needed? Are power meters really needed? Is anything less than a 36 spoke wheel needed? No, none of that is actually needed because we could get by without it. If the industry only produced what was needed, it would have stopped producing new products years ago, maybe decades ago. Innovation doesn’t have to happen because it’s needed. We all have kit that we love that isn’t needed, so it looks a bit like we’re talking out our arses when we moan or complain, “Is ______ really needed?”

Disc brakes provide:
–consistent braking, no matter the weather
–possibly lighter wheels
–possibly more aero wheels
–wheels that last much longer
–relief from the worry of brake heat causing glue to soften, tubes to fail, or clincher rims to fail
–easier braking for people with decreased function in hands or just weakier hands

Hydro brakes additionally provide:
–potentially better modulation
–potentially less effort at the lever
–more routing options for hose than cables
–far fewer complications from use in foul weather
–potential for adjustable effort at the lever (like with Brembo’s GP Master Cylinder)

For racers and people who love going downhill fast, better modulation with consistent brake power will make for later braking for corners and ultimately faster downhill times/speeds. Also, the potential exists for hydro brakes to reduce weight.

For people who ride in inclement weather (something a lot of folks have to do or enjoy doing), disc brakes obviously provide better braking and thus better safety, especially when riding includes dealing with drivers.

For loaded tourers the benefits are obvious.

The benefits for other riders obviously exist and go far beyond those listed here.

I’m with @robin. A lot of this thread sounded like one of those “When I rode bikes back in my day..” kind of things. No one is being forced to buy any of this stuff. You can still be smarmy at the coffee shop when you see someone with a Di2 Hydro set up. You can still profess your love for steel frrames or whatevs. You can even still get blown out the back.

In the words of the great Gary Nixon, “to go fast, you need to be able to brake hard” and caliper brakes on carbon rims brake HORRIBLY. Facts is facts. Anyone who says rim brakes perform better than disc is just wrong.

The nuances can be debated forever, but the facts are plain and simple. Hydraulic disc brakes outperform all other types of braking for wheeled vehicles in almost every category. The largest exception being ease of setup.

As the Ed. said, the cycling industry is set up where OE brakes are cut to precise length, pre-bled and tested before being sent out to bike manufactures. Large factory assemblers only have clamp the lever to the bar, bolt the caliper to the frame, hold the lever closed and tighten everything down. Usually with high speed air wrenches. Internal routing adds a bunch of complexity for either the factory assembler or shop mechanic and takes out the in-house testing that every brake receives.

As someone who has worked in the cycling industry in both the retail and factory levels this can be quite a conundrum. Adding hand assembly, routing and bleeding to a large factory operation requires that the bike can not be on an assembly line. Where bikes literally move rapidly on a conveyor belt from bare frame to a box in under about 15min. Having hand assembly needing to be done on a fixed stand adds significantly to the assembly time and final retail price of these bikes. In the case of most $3K+ bikes this is already done when suspension pivots, BB’s, seat tubes, fittings and head tubes are cleaned of paint and faced. Although the advent of press-fit BB’s and slip in head set bearings has done away with much of this.

On the retail side, the OE manufactures are understandably worried that they will not be able to control the quality of the final assembly of the brakes opening them up to product performance and liability issues.

This issue really comes down to tooling and what would best serve the end user of the product. I would consider that if the brake manufactures could come up with some universal standards for barb fitting, hose diameter and tooling, brake fitting and bleeding could be reliably done by the shop mechanic. Where I could see a problem is on the lowest end. Currently, the lowest end versions of most types brake systems are not easy to set up and keep adjusted. Though I guess at that price range hydraulic road disc brakes could just be done the old way and routed externally.

In the end I don’t think most shops would balk at having to buy a couple hundred dollar tool and train their wrenches if it means a significant jump in performance, quality and fit. But I guess we’ll see….

Disc brake is ridiculous on a 20 lbs bicycle ( to begin ; you just have to not have carbon rim ) And you know for what . Cause simply the larger is the diameter of the disc ( here the good old rim ) the better the leverage any pads could aply . And I know that here everyone love hi -tec …so just take a look at a ( defunct ) motorcycle brand like Buell . Just tell me why Erick develop the zero torsional front brake on his motorcycles , maybe it’s after simply looking at an good old bicycle rim brake . On a bicycle the use of the allready in place rim mean no additional weigth and a lot of total surface area for the good old pads to bite .

I see a lot of people here questioning whether hydraulics on a road bike is a good idea or not. I’ve been riding my hydraulic road bike for months now and I’ll never go back. I’m a big heavy guy and not a weight optimizer, so the feel of my brakes is the most important criteria I care about. The way I came up with to do it, I didn’t need any expensive custom systems. A simple retrofit was all it took to make it all work beautifully with my existing STI levers. I posted pictures and how to’s over at http://hydraulicroadbike.com in case anyone wants to see in detail how I did it.

But back to the original point, it’s fantastic. I always hated heating and scoring my rims, especially the carbon ones. It rides great and I’m really looking forward to see what happens in the next couple years when the big commercial players start offering disc solutions.