Discs for 29'

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I bought my Gary Fisher 29 supercal some time ago. I've basically rebuilt the bike with a good set of racing parts, all i need to do is complete the bike with some discs for the new racing season. I've been looking at some hope mini's but i thought that their might be some other people that could help me with my selction. Any advice would be much appreciated!

Originally posted by tomek07
I bought my Gary Fisher 29 supercal some time ago. I've basically rebuilt the bike with a good set of racing parts, all i need to do is complete the bike with some discs for the new racing season. I've been looking at some hope mini's but i thought that their might be some other people that could help me with my selction. Any advice would be much appreciated!

I can only speak to the discs I have tried, but I currently really dig my XT discs and wasn't impressed with the Hayes hfx discs I used to have. I rode my buddies rig after I put his new Avid Juicy's on it and they seemed to be very capable brakes, but how much can you tell riding around the neighborhood with a busted up wing? He reports they are treating him better than the stock Hayes he had. If weight is the key thing for you then the hopes could be a good choice (new XTRs are supposed to be great). Have fun figuring it out and getting out there with your baby!

K.

I've had Magura julies and now i've got Hayes HFX 9s with 8 inch discs

the maguras would overheat a bit easily and go mushy on long descents

I haven't had any problems with the Hayes and they are very powerful but you have to make sure that they are setup properly and bled

then you have to bed the pads in by doing a couple of long hard downhill runs on the brakes to cook the pads, then they work fine (make sure you do this BEFORE you ride the bike too much)

I've ridden XT's, Mini's, Hayes HFX MAGS, and XTR discs for at least close to a year each. All of them were excellent systems but If I had to pick again the Mini's would be at the bottom of my list. They had a very mushy feeling lever because Hope uses a wider hose so these is more fuild to compress. Its difficult to get the same firm lever feel you get on all the others. What I found to be a real problem, and this happened to three of my riding buddies who also had mini's, is that the two huge pistons don't come out out evenly. Apparently they are so big they tend to tilt slightly and jam causing some horrible wheel drag because only one piston ends up moving. You have to pretty much disassemble the caliper to fit it back into place. Keeping it clean regularly will usually solve the problem but and overall it was a great brake but in my opinion those small little hassles were just not worth it. Of the remaining brakes the Hayes had the best stopping power. Properly set up there is nothing that can match them. The lever feel is excellent, they are superbly reliable. XT's also offered performace that felt very similar to the hayes but the initial grab isn't as powerfull as hayes. The only thing I find about the XT's is that the lever is a bit small and skinny so if you have big hands you might prefer the larger hayes lever. The XTR's performance feels very similar if not nearly identical to the XT's.