formula brakes (older ones)

dimmockg

The ladies bike could do with new brakes to replace a broken one

Work colleague has some unopened/unused formula k18's (or 24's, checking tonight and ive put 18 as worse case) for sale at a decent price (£50).

The wife only does light commuting to work, road use and some very light trails on her rockhopper

They are to replace avid single digit cables and come with everything required. Her bike and wheels are disk ready. I understand there are deore etc out there at around £90, but will the above be suitable for the kind of use she would carry out or are deore that much more worth the extra???

cheers

junglist_matty

Formula K18's are superb brakes, far far far far better than Deore, at £50, if they are in working condition, snap them off him, that's a bargain.

junglist_matty

By the way, does her bike have disc brake mounts? Best check first!

warpcow

Yep, excellent brakes. I've had k18s and k24s and they just keep on working. There's little difference apart from the bite-point adjust on the k24s, which I never touched anyway. I sold some pretty heavily used k24s for about that price a few months ago so I'd probably bite your colleague's hand off if I were you.

peter413

Oro's are very nice brakes and at that price are a steal but I wouldn't say they are better than the new Deore's. Different maybe but certainly not better. I found the Deore's to have more power, pretty similar modulation and nice lever blades. They have a different feel at the lever to each other which is why someone would prefer one to another.

dimmockg

Cheers all.

Her bike is most certainly disk read (frame, forks and hubs) so all good there

It transpires they are k18's about 3 years old bit completely unused, still in packet, come with discs and mounting gear so an all in complete package. Not sure in hose lengths yet, but how easy are they to trim and re-bleed?

ThanksBye

Trimming Easy, Formulas can be quite tricky to bleed. Epic Bleed Solutions do a neat bleed kit for not to much money though.

junglist_matty

dimmockg wrote:

Cheers all.

Her bike is most certainly disk read (frame, forks and hubs) so all good there

It transpires they are k18's about 3 years old bit completely unused, still in packet, come with discs and mounting gear so an all in complete package. Not sure in hose lengths yet, but how easy are they to trim and re-bleed?

I wouldn't worry too much if the cables are too long, unless you're really into how the bike looks.... It's easier just to deal with long cables than to mess around cutting them, re-bleeding then finding you got an air bubble in the line (check my 29er in my sig; I've got long brake lines, but don't care).

As for power of K18's, well I'm 95kgs, 6ft3 and they are super powerful, I don't know where this other guy saying about Deore's being super powerful is coming from, maybe he's lightweight because they're not; I've got a set of Mega's and they are supposed to be more powerful and supposed to have better modulation, but I honestly can't tell any difference at all between them and the K18's, IMO you don't need anything other than these, super cheap and super good value.... I run my K18s with a 180 front and 160 rear.

peter413

That would be me saying the Deore's are powerful? I've got more than 10kg on your weight and I've owned both Oro's and Deore's, the Deore's being more powerful. Wasn't just a bad set either, I've owned two sets of Oro's and now own two sets of Deore's. I even replaced the set of M810 Saint's on my Marin with the Deore's and didn't feel I lost any power.

The Deore's stop me fine on my rigid and hardtail with 160mm rotors front and rear really well. I run a 203mm on the front of my Marin for that extra bit of power but could get away with a 160mm if I needed to.