yuley95
soft-arse Yuley is on the lifts again
Item: Pro E4 brakes
Purchased From: Ali Express
Purchase Price (approx): $150 plus tax/delivery
Usage: stopping
Pros - Price and looks
Cons - Bar clamp is a bit odd and brakes are more about modulation a than outright power
Comments:
These brakes are pretty much live up to any expectations you might have when you stumble across them on Ali Express. Beautiful beyond their price tag, compromised by strange design choices and probably a little undermined by cost saving measures in a few areas.
That said, my over-riding impression of these, and my TL;DR review is: good brakes at a great price that are more than enough for any trail bike but fall short of established options for enduro or downhill riding.
What do you get in the box?
When you fist open the box, you find two beautifully machined levers and callipers wrapped in thin bubble wrap. They are set up reverse to Australian standard with the front calliper (short hose) attached the the left hand lever while the right hand lever is capped with the hose detached and also capped with mineral fluid inside.
The front hose is 800mm long and the rear is 1500mm.
Other parts included are limited. There is only calliper bolts and the parts you need to attach the rear hose - 1 barb, olive, compression nut and sleeve to cover the compression nut. It means that you will have to re-use the barb/olive already attached to the front hose when you change it to the right hand lever. Either that or take a chance on another barb and olive from another brand.
The levers in particular really are beautiful. If they came with a fancy brand logo on them, a lot of people would proudly rock a set. The lever is drilled for grip and has a nice looking wheel for reach adjustment. There is no bite point adjustment.
They are pretty light too. The lever by itself weighs 102gm while the full front brake (including lever, hose, calliper and brake pads) weighs 231gm and the rear weighs 245gm.
For comparison, a 2-pot XT brake with 800mm length hose and brake pads weighs 269gm and an old Avid Trail 9 (4-pot) brake with a 750mm hose and brake pads weighs 223gm.
The king of light weight levers, the Magura MT7 lever, weighs just 74gm but I do find them a little brittle and flexy and it’s why I run Shigura on my Enduro bike.
Installation went reasonably smooth. I managed to swap the short hose to the right hand lever by re-using the barb/olive already attached. It sealed up well and still had pressure.
The rear brake was easy enough to install with the fresh barb and olive but the lever feel was marginally softer than the front and needed a bleed to feel better.
It was about at this stage that the shine started to come off the brakes (not literally). I attached them to my commuter for a test as it has fully external routing. I’m currently running an old set of Elixir Trail 9 brakes that are four pot and surprisingly good in terms of power and feel. I was keen to see how the Pro brakes went in comparison.
The Pro brakes appear to fit with the SRAM martchmaker clamps but in reality, they are just a few mm off and I couldn’t get the right hand brake attached with the MMX clamp. I could wiggles and shimmy the left into place but it results in a poor connection to the clamp and subsequently to the bar.
It meant resorting to using the supplied clamps which look nice but are flawed in that you need to remove your grips to slide them on as they are curved. They is a slight chance you could press them over the bar but I think it’s more likely you will just bend the clamp out of shape attempting it…
Even with the supplied clamp, the fit is not the best and needs to be tightened down quite hard to create a good connection with the bar. Once on, I found the lever reach was dialled all the way in and too close to the bar so I turned the adjustment knob/wheel to move the lever further out. I was hoping for a light bust positive action but what I got was a painfully tight and difficult to move adjuster with a slow and vague action. It does work - just slowly and with no defined clicks of detents.
The lever shape is close to SRAM and is something that feels very comfortable to me
There was enough pressure in the system to go for a quick spin and bed in the brakes. The back had a lot of bite straight away but the front took a good 20 stops to start to deliver the power I was after. Once bed in, power was good but the levers still felt a little soft.
I decided to attempt a lever bleed in the hope of firming them up a bit without having to risk a full bleed not knowing what fitting and tools I needed.
It turned out that the lever bleed port fits the same size attachment as Magura uses on the calliper so I was able to do a good lever bleed and both brakes ended up feeling consistent and a little firmer overall. I think I have the brakes feeling about as firm as they get though and there is a still a pretty long dead stroke and lean much more towards ‘modulated power’ rather than ‘instant bite’.
Initially, I was keen to get these on the Kavenz and really test them out on some gnarly terrain but that would require routing the rear brake through my frame which is a pain in the arse and without spare barb/olives is not something I want to attempt. In terms of the front brake - the way the clamp seems to apply uneven pressure AND requires at least 16.5 ugga-duggas of clamping force to feel solid on the bars means I’m not keen to strap them to my carbon bars.
So, overall I would say these are pretty good brakes for the price but they are not the super-bargain Trickstuff knockoffs I was hoping for. They do the job but then again so do the $20 second hand Avid 7’s I put on my wife’s bike 5 years ago that are still going strong.
Purchased From: Ali Express
Purchase Price (approx): $150 plus tax/delivery
Usage: stopping
Pros - Price and looks
Cons - Bar clamp is a bit odd and brakes are more about modulation a than outright power
Comments:
These brakes are pretty much live up to any expectations you might have when you stumble across them on Ali Express. Beautiful beyond their price tag, compromised by strange design choices and probably a little undermined by cost saving measures in a few areas.
That said, my over-riding impression of these, and my TL;DR review is: good brakes at a great price that are more than enough for any trail bike but fall short of established options for enduro or downhill riding.
What do you get in the box?
When you fist open the box, you find two beautifully machined levers and callipers wrapped in thin bubble wrap. They are set up reverse to Australian standard with the front calliper (short hose) attached the the left hand lever while the right hand lever is capped with the hose detached and also capped with mineral fluid inside.
The front hose is 800mm long and the rear is 1500mm.
Other parts included are limited. There is only calliper bolts and the parts you need to attach the rear hose - 1 barb, olive, compression nut and sleeve to cover the compression nut. It means that you will have to re-use the barb/olive already attached to the front hose when you change it to the right hand lever. Either that or take a chance on another barb and olive from another brand.
The levers in particular really are beautiful. If they came with a fancy brand logo on them, a lot of people would proudly rock a set. The lever is drilled for grip and has a nice looking wheel for reach adjustment. There is no bite point adjustment.
They are pretty light too. The lever by itself weighs 102gm while the full front brake (including lever, hose, calliper and brake pads) weighs 231gm and the rear weighs 245gm.
For comparison, a 2-pot XT brake with 800mm length hose and brake pads weighs 269gm and an old Avid Trail 9 (4-pot) brake with a 750mm hose and brake pads weighs 223gm.
The king of light weight levers, the Magura MT7 lever, weighs just 74gm but I do find them a little brittle and flexy and it’s why I run Shigura on my Enduro bike.
Installation went reasonably smooth. I managed to swap the short hose to the right hand lever by re-using the barb/olive already attached. It sealed up well and still had pressure.
The rear brake was easy enough to install with the fresh barb and olive but the lever feel was marginally softer than the front and needed a bleed to feel better.
It was about at this stage that the shine started to come off the brakes (not literally). I attached them to my commuter for a test as it has fully external routing. I’m currently running an old set of Elixir Trail 9 brakes that are four pot and surprisingly good in terms of power and feel. I was keen to see how the Pro brakes went in comparison.
The Pro brakes appear to fit with the SRAM martchmaker clamps but in reality, they are just a few mm off and I couldn’t get the right hand brake attached with the MMX clamp. I could wiggles and shimmy the left into place but it results in a poor connection to the clamp and subsequently to the bar.
It meant resorting to using the supplied clamps which look nice but are flawed in that you need to remove your grips to slide them on as they are curved. They is a slight chance you could press them over the bar but I think it’s more likely you will just bend the clamp out of shape attempting it…
Even with the supplied clamp, the fit is not the best and needs to be tightened down quite hard to create a good connection with the bar. Once on, I found the lever reach was dialled all the way in and too close to the bar so I turned the adjustment knob/wheel to move the lever further out. I was hoping for a light bust positive action but what I got was a painfully tight and difficult to move adjuster with a slow and vague action. It does work - just slowly and with no defined clicks of detents.
The lever shape is close to SRAM and is something that feels very comfortable to me
There was enough pressure in the system to go for a quick spin and bed in the brakes. The back had a lot of bite straight away but the front took a good 20 stops to start to deliver the power I was after. Once bed in, power was good but the levers still felt a little soft.
I decided to attempt a lever bleed in the hope of firming them up a bit without having to risk a full bleed not knowing what fitting and tools I needed.
It turned out that the lever bleed port fits the same size attachment as Magura uses on the calliper so I was able to do a good lever bleed and both brakes ended up feeling consistent and a little firmer overall. I think I have the brakes feeling about as firm as they get though and there is a still a pretty long dead stroke and lean much more towards ‘modulated power’ rather than ‘instant bite’.
Initially, I was keen to get these on the Kavenz and really test them out on some gnarly terrain but that would require routing the rear brake through my frame which is a pain in the arse and without spare barb/olives is not something I want to attempt. In terms of the front brake - the way the clamp seems to apply uneven pressure AND requires at least 16.5 ugga-duggas of clamping force to feel solid on the bars means I’m not keen to strap them to my carbon bars.
So, overall I would say these are pretty good brakes for the price but they are not the super-bargain Trickstuff knockoffs I was hoping for. They do the job but then again so do the $20 second hand Avid 7’s I put on my wife’s bike 5 years ago that are still going strong.
