Recently, Magura upped the ante in terms of brake power with their super moto inspired MT7 quad piston brakes. They also had the light weight end of the spectrum covered with their dual piston, super light MT8. With the MT7 positioned more towards extreme riding and the MT8 aimed towards XC, trail riders were left somewhere in the middle. Wanting to offer a more trail friendly brake, Magura did some mixing and matching and came up with the new MT Trail Carbon…
Essentially, the new brake is just a mash up of current parts, but it’s one that looks quite good. At the caliper end you’ll find the standard MT7 quad piston caliper up front and the MT8 dual piston caliper in the rear. Still plenty of power for most trail bikes, but less weight. To give the brakes a bit of differentiation, they are polished to a near mirror finish with blue accents on the sides.
Those calipers are then mated to the MT8 Carbotecture brake lever with a Carbolay carbon lever. Reach adjust is tooled, and the levers can be run on either side of the bar for standard or moto braking.
On the scale, the front brake came in at 252g and the rear at 222g with full length housing and fluid, but without rotors or mounting hardware. Not bad for what should be some seriously powerful brakes. Magura claims the complete brake is 15% lighter than the MT7 but only 5% heavier than the MT8. Brakes will be sold for $299 each with Storm HC rotors in 160, 180, or 203mm rotors.
