Shimano Brakes

leegreenhough

I only started road biking as a convert from mountain last year but am
starting to need to upgrade, i currently have Tiagra setup but want to
upgrade. I was doing a technical decent in Wales and i felt the Tiagra
brakes were only just good enough, wondered would 105 brakes make a big
difference, any suggestions would be great, cheers

Grill

Best bet is to upgrade pads first. Check out the Swissstop BXP.

Bobbinogs

Yepp, agree with Grill. Forget about going to 105, just get some decent pads (SwissStop FlashPro Green are my favs but Koolstop are pretty good too). They will make a massive difference over most generic pads. Bear in mind that the Swisstop look very expensive but come as a complete set of 4 rather than the usual packs of 2.

The other thing to bear in mind is that if you are coming from a world of disk brakes and fat rubber then rim brakes and skinny tyres are always going to be a bit rubbish so the best upgrade is learning to read the road.

stueys

Went through the same cycle, have Tiagra brakes and swapped out the pads for swissstop. They improved braking significantly but I'm still not happy with it. At some point I'll be upgrading the groupset. My comparison is a set of dura ace brakes on my other bike, so not comparing Tiagra rim to discs.

Grill

Stueys wrote:

Went through the same cycle, have Tiagra brakes and swapped out the pads for swissstop. They improved braking significantly but I'm still not happy with it. At some point I'll be upgrading the groupset. My comparison is a set of dura ace brakes on my other bike, so not comparing Tiagra rim to discs.

A bit unfair to compare Tiagra brakes to Dura Ace considering they're the pinnacle of rim brakes.

leegreenhough

cheers for the info guys, new pads it is then, it will be cheaper and quicker i suppose. I know they will never be disk brakes but just felt they could give me a little more, went down a 30% grade and wet myself lol

canny_lad

Sh@t myself on Saturday going down the Burway in Church Stretton (25ish%) on my 105 brakes. Had brake fade & swear I could smell the pads overheating. Be interesting to try it again when I eventually put Swisstop pads in.

Totally off topic - Grill, looks like the Wyndy is up & running, you gonna post some pics, or have I missed em?

Grill

There may be a cheeky picture here:
http://www.bikeradar.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=40042&t=12926110&start=80#p18482048

Rotor 3d and Praxis rings still to be installed...

canny_lad

Liking that a lot Looks f quick, fair play to you.

Did a search in your road bikes but your avatar has WyndyMilla as one word, the thread has it as two :evil:

Grill

I'll post it there along with my Plasma 3 sometime next week. Won't be totally finished for a few months since I'm waiting for Mavic to release their pedals.

kajjal

Bobbinogs wrote:

Yepp, agree with Grill. Forget about going to 105, just get some decent pads (SwissStop FlashPro Green are my favs but Koolstop are pretty good too). They will make a massive difference over most generic pads. Bear in mind that the Swisstop look very expensive but come as a complete set of 4 rather than the usual packs of 2.

The other thing to bear in mind is that if you are coming from a world of disk brakes and fat rubber then rim brakes and skinny tyres are always going to be a bit rubbish so the best upgrade is learning to read the road.

I had this when I first went out on my road bike after years of mountain biking. Felt like someone had stolen my brakes and I over shot a corner

stueys

Grill wrote:

Stueys wrote:

Went through the same cycle, have Tiagra brakes and swapped out the pads for swissstop. They improved braking significantly but I'm still not happy with it. At some point I'll be upgrading the groupset. My comparison is a set of dura ace brakes on my other bike, so not comparing Tiagra rim to discs.

A bit unfair to compare Tiagra brakes to Dura Ace considering they're the pinnacle of rim brakes.

Yep agreed. Guess my point was that I wasn't a big fan of the Tiagra ones...