Brakes upgrade on a budget

[glasgowcyclist]

I didn't even know there was such a procedure.

Here's a pdf document explaining the correct procedure (if you haven't already found out):

 

[Deleted member 23692]

A couple of issues.

Entry level hydraulics won t automatically provided more braking effort than a properly functioning mechanical system.

Not all forks are able to safely go up a disc size, although the bulk can, so you need to check.

I'd try decent pads, degrease the discs, and high quality compressionless cables, maybe £25 Or so. That may well do it.

If it doesn't I'd look at the bike and decide if it was worth the expense of upgrading to SLX hydros - I've had the Deore ones, and while they performed fine they were unreliable, and once I'd finally identified the seal at fault within the master cylinder Shimano couldn't get me one, so I've an aversion to them. Keep a wide berth of "cheap" hydros, the real bottom end stuff from Avid, Tektro etc.

Deore M6000 are not entry level these days . They use the same master cylinder casting and internals as SLX M7000 and XT M8000 brakes and only differ in 'usage' features. SLX differ over Deroe in having a tool free reach adjustment, ie a plastic knob rather than having to use an allen key. Unless you need to constantly adjust the reach on the fly, then the Deore are lighter and work just as well. XT have have the same tool free reach adjust as the SLX with the added feature of free stroke adjustment and wee dimple on the lever to give more grip. Disregarding these features they are exactly the same.

At t'other end the basic casting is similar and all three use the same 22mm ceramic pistons and internals . The only difference here is that Deore use nut and olive hose union and the other two use bolt and banjo unions, which just gives a bit more variation in the hose run. Between the three there are wee external shape difference that save weight as th cost goes up

Any of those will be far superior than cable operated jobbies. ... even the humble Acera M369 that I run on my ebike

 

[User76022]

What about these? My gut tells me to be wary of brakes that I can only find on ebay. Especially so cheap.

https://rover.ebay.com/rover/0/0/0?mpre=https://www.ebay.co.uk/ulk/itm/262562574281

 

[Spoked Wheels]

What brakes are they?

I run BB7's and they are very good.

Me too and they are serviceable so after every winter they get fully serviced. On new build I researched what new brakes were out there and in the end I decided to carry on using BB7s.

 

[User76022]

See if this video helps?

I've just had chance to have a good look at my brakes following advice kindly shared on here.

My back brake is the most noisy but it does work quite well. The front brake is less effective. I used to be a back brake person before this bike, but I've learned that with disks, to avoid overheating, it's better to make good use of both to share the load.

But anyway, I found that when I operate the back break, the caliper was forcing some minimal lateral movement in the disk. The front brake however was way off, pushing the disk sideways by a fair bit. Armed with an allen key and the info shared here, I set about adjusting things. I've not been for a ride out on it yet since, but testing in 'lab conditions' the front brake is now infinitely better. It feels comparable to my mate's hydraulic brakes. A proper ride out will be the real test though.