A little while back I replaced my leaky SRAM Rival Brakes on the Kona, with shiny new Hope Calipers, but the front one never quite fitted right. With spacers I managed to get the vast majority of the caliper over the disc, but it wasn't ideal. After several very hilly bikepacking trips this year I started to idly ponder whether I could uprate my front brake even further and fit a 180 rotor rather than a 160 and possibly solve my caliper fit issues at the same time.
This led me to look into mounting standards and the realisation that I actually don't have Post Mount brakes like I thought I had, but IS or International Standard mountings. This is an older standard that you don't see so much off these days, however, it was actually really good news. In order to mount calipers onto a IS standard frame, you need either IS specific brakes or an adapter to convert the IS mount to post mount, which is what's fitted on my bike. All of this is a long winded way of saying, all I needed to convert my front brake to 180mm was a new IS-PM 180F adaptor!
So for the grand sum of €11 a shiny new adaptor arrived, here it is alongside the original 160mm adapter:
You'll notice it also has R160 stamped on it, the same adaptor fitted on the back will allow you to run a 160mm rotor there, I really don't understand the Geometry behind that, but I don't need too!
The old 160mm disc was taken off of the front wheel and will now be a spare for for the rear of either my Mountain Bike or the Kona. The new 180mm fitted straight on in a few minutes. A few minutes later I'd refitted the wheel and the caliper and re-centred it, I may need to adjust it again, but for now it's good to go. The caliper now fits perfectly on the adapter and lines up perfectly on the disc, it all looks really nice too, super happy with that, a cheap easy upgrade that will give me some pretty powerful braking.
