Sora mechanical disc brakes

chazh

Hi,

Does anyone have any experience with Shimano’s Sora mechanical disc brakes? Any good? Awful? I know they’re not hydro (bad!) and they have single-sided piston movement (bad!), but I’d be interested to hear how people have got on with them.

Thinking of getting a Via Nirone All Road and they are, on paper, my least favourite part of the spec sheet.

Thanks.

yiannism

I dont like mechanical disc brakes at all. I much prefer rimbrakes instead of them

janwal

What size are you? Rutland Have Cube with full hydro in sale.Had both and hydro are so much better.
https://www.rutlandcycling.com/bikes/ro ... gJ9ZfD_BwE

chazh

Thanks for the replies, guys.

I know hydros are superior, but I am still interested in the question of how do the Sora brakes rate as mechanical discs. Worse than Spyres? Better than cheap Promax? Anyone using them?

yiannism

I would go with shimano, they just work always

timothyw

So far as I can ascertain, they are basically similar to avid bb5 or promax or any other kind of cheap mechanical disk brake, in that they have one static pad and one pad that moves, pressing the rotor into the static pad by bending it.

There is very little wrong with this approach from a braking point of view - properly set, they brake just as well as spyres or hydros for that matter - I ran some BB5s on one bike for a time so could compare them directly with the spyres I had on my other bike - the braking was great.

The problem with this design is that to keep the braking great, you need to regularly tweak the position of the static pad to account for pad wear - and unless you take the caliper to bits and clean it each time you do it, it's inevitable that a bit of brake dust/road crud will be on the threads that you are screwing the static pad onto.

If you don't take the caliper to bits and clean and grease the threads on a semi regular basis, it's pretty inevitable that sooner or later the static pad will seize and your brake caliper will be useless.

The Spyre isn't completely fettle free - to get the best braking you still need to individually adjust each side - but there is much less fettling for ongoing wear and I've never had one seize on me in some four years of abuse.

Still, in the short term (and long term if you do the correct maintenance) I'm sure Sora mechanical will be fine.

w00dster

I had the Sora Mechanical, I just couldn’t set them up, constant fettling required. Swapped for TRP Spyre, a tad better but in my opinion they still didn’t have adequate stopping power. I took the bike with Sora brakes to lbs just to see if it was me, but nope, wasn’t just me but rubbish at fettling.

I’ve gone hydraulic and it’s a world of difference. In my experience mechanical disc brakes are a poor substitution and I’d prefer to stay on rim brakes if hydraulic wasn’t an option.