Road.cc spotted this contraption in the opening day of the Taipei cycling show. Tektro looks to be pretty close to a production-ready tool for converting cable road brake levers to hydraulic disc brakes.
UPDATE: Original photo that better showed the device has vanished, so we replaced it with this one.
Part of Tektro’s TRP (Tektro Racing Products) and called the Parabox, it transfers the mechanical pull of the lever into a hydraulic brake fluid push toward the caliper. The cables come into the rear of the device, which clamps around (or is mounted to) a steerer tube spacer below the stem.
The body of the Parabox holds the master cylinder which pushes fluid into hoses off the front of the device. It’s not the most elegant looking solution, but could get the early adopters off and running before SRAM/Shimano/Campy develop a fully integrated hydraulic road shift/brake lever…and we’ve heard from both of the big S’s that it’s going to be a while.