Upgrading brakes and reusing existing hose

[gness]

Hey guys

Just after a bit of advice. I've got a new bike which came with Deore brakes and I've got XT replacements on the way. The brake hoses are perfect length so is there an easy way to only swap over the levers and calipers and just reuse the existing hose?

Mainly concerned with the rear because I don't want to faff about with the internal routed hose.

 

[leitch]

It's easy to swap hoses at the lever without bleeding but swapping them at the caliper you will likely lose a bit of fluid that might necessitate a top-up bleed. There are no compatibility issues between Deore/XT, unless you're going from 2-4 pot calipers in which case the banjo bolts are different (hoses are still interchangeable though).

Re: faffing with the internal routing, the new brakes will likely come with the rear brake lever and hose disassembled to make internal routing easy - they have a little yellow cap on so you can pass the hose through the frame mess-free before trimming to length and fitting to the lever.

 

[hellmansam]

It all depends if the old brakes have the banjo fitting at the caliper end, like the XT brakes do. As Leitch said they now have some nifty packaging to reduce the need to bleed, I've assembled a few new bikes lately where the lever, caliper and hose are filled but not connected, while the lever has the yellow bung, the hose has some kind of plastic membrane which pops under lever pressure (but not from syringe pressure - it leaks at the bleed nipple instead)

 

[The Duckmeister]

No go. Deore use a straight olive &barb compression connection, SLX & up use a banjo.

 

[EsPeGe]

Stating the blatantly obvious but keep the pads well away when you do all this. Take the bastards out and put them a good kilometre away as you do the set up.