Hydraulic brakes for road/CX?

tk46hal

Hi All,

I've fitted the Tektro Lyra brakes to my cross bike and they are ok!


I'm told that they sit somewhere between the canti's and proper hydraulics so an improvement there then! My question is, other than the Hope ones of which I'm told are quite stiff and not quite right, what are my other options or is it just too soon to see an improved system/systems?
Thanks.

meesterbond

I think the main issue at the moment is that as far as I'm aware, no one makes a combined hydraulic brake / shifter unit, so you're stuck using a converter. There's a few on the market but none look particularly elegant. That said, I can't see it being long before Shimano or SRAM introduce a shifter / brake unit with hydraulic reservoir .

From my mountain bike days I remember a well set up cable system being pretty close to hydraulic disks power wise, although the modulation seemed to suffer a little - cable disks tended to be a little more binary in their action.
Personally, I'm still using Cantis on my cross bike and they're shocking, so disks of any sort have got to be an improvement.

MichaelW

SRAM are expected to bring out a hydraulic lever but in RED, the pro/elite groupset. Expect it to be very expensive and have little takeup in the pro peleton. A cheaper Force or Rival hydraulic lever would be really popular with winter commuters, winter training athletes, tandemists, cyclo-crossers and tourists.