- SRAM has sent me a set of their brand new
G2 ultimate brakes to make a video about,
and tell you all about the technical features.
Only trouble is, it's, well, it's sunny,
so I've put them on the bike instead,
and we're here in the woods.
(upbeat music) (logo thumping and swishing)
Ah there we go, that's better.
Out in the woods just where I like being.
Now this is great, because you get to see
the brakes being used by an everyday mountain biker
on an everyday mountain bike,
in an everyday mountain biking location.
Now, the G2 brake.
This is the second generation version of the Guide,
which is an immensely popular brake from SRAM,
that's suitable for virtually every discipline
of mountain biking, that we have a name for.
I guess you could call it then the Guide two,
but I'm gonna call it the G2,
because that's what it says on the levers.
There's two main models currently in the range.
There's the G2 Ultimate that I have
right here in front of me,
and there's also the RSC model which, of course,
have slightly different features on them.
Now the brakes themselves are available
with rotor sizes from 140 all the way up to 200 mil,
although there is a 220 millimeter rotor option
coming further down the line.
Now the standard rotors are 1.85 millimeters thick,
whereas the bigger 220s, they're two millimeters thick,
so they're slightly stiffer,
and also aids a bit of heat dissipation.
(energetic music)
Now SRAM say that the G2 offers more power,
more consistency, better quality,
better feel, and more value for money.
Fantastic.
(upbeat music)
So let's have a little look at SRAM
and their braking history.
Now SRAM actually has only been producing brakes
under the SRAM name since 2015.
And that brake was the Guide.
That's right, the first inclination of that G2.
Now the Guide is an absolutely fantastic brake,
and it took everything that SRAM had learned
from the previous name, which was Avid of course.
Now, they produced brakes under the Avid name
from the very beginning.
Now this leads me to something very cool
about SRAM as a company.
Now SRAM is almost a collective of companies
that all are specialists in their respective fields.
For example, RockShox.
RockShox were the first company to make
mountain bike suspension forks.
And then there's Avid.
The thing with Avid, it was a company born of necessity.
Avid's founder, Wayne Lumpkin,
basically he was a mountain biker in need of a lower gear
to help him winch up those climbs.
And there wasn't a way of currently putting
a smaller chainring on his bike
so he basically manufactured his own adapter
in order for him to put far smaller chainrings on.
So that was the very first product by Avid.
Now following on from there came their brakes.
So it was a Tri-Align cantilever brakes,
which were CNC works of art.
And there was also the Speed Dial lever that came with them.
Now they were so good, and they were so sought after,
that at the time, when all the other companies
were producing CNC machined stuff,
Avid nearly destroyed them all.
And then later on, Avid became a bit more mass market,
going into bigger, bigger markets, going to like OEM.
And this was a much later version of that Speed Dial lever,
but you can see even from the beginning
Avid had a lot of adjustability, with the lever feel there,
built into them, just with the dial on the front there
you could dial in, basically your braking power,
and of course the adjustability and the lever reach.
So that had a lot of features crammed in.
But if we skip forward to 2003,
this is where things really heated up, with the Juicy.
This one's one of my old ones, this is a Juicy Ultimate,
and it's in a bit of a state as you can see.
However, these were phenomenal,
and they only got better as things moved on.
Now this is something that SRAM are continuing,
and have done since 2015 with the Guide,
and now with the new G2.
It's really a brake for every mountain biker.
It suits all bikes.
It's really, really powerful, it's also very light.
I mean I say it suits nearly all mountain bikers
because there's still the Code,
and the Code of course is the big, heavy duty,
downhill-capable caliper.
It's not that much more powerful,
but it does cope with heat that bit better,
but it is heavier so there's a trade-off.
This isn't a brake for every mountain biker,
it's for the gravity focused.
And of course there's the Level as well,
and the Level will suit those looking for less power
and more, basically, in the lightweight stakes.
The G2 is where it's at.
Okay then, so let's take a closer look at the G2
and we'll see how it differs from other brakes
currently offered by SRAM.
Starting right here up at the handlebars,
looking at the brake levers.
Now the lever body itself is a brand new design,
although it does use the same sealing system
already seen on the current Guide brakes.
Now on both models offered, the RSC and the Ultimate,
there are two main adjustments on the lever.
You can adjust the reach,
just with this knob on the front here,
and you can also adjust the bite point
of the actual brake pads,
by this dial right here on the front.
The SwingLink system is something we've seen
on previous models of SRAM brake,
and it's very much a tried and tested feature.
And it increases the modulation when you're using the brake,
and it also reduces the deadband,
which is how much the pads move
in relation to how much the levers move,
sometimes you have that sort of dead patch,
so that is reduced by having that feature.
Now the Guide RSC, i.e. not the one I have here,
has a larger pivot, dowel, and bushing setup.
And the aim of that is to reduce the amount of flop
that you get at the end of the lever,
so it's more laterally stiff.
And of course, wobbly levers are a little bit annoying
so that is dramatically reduced on the new model.
Whereas this one here, the Ultimate that I have,
actually has a bearing as part of the lever,
and it's got a carbon lever as well,
again with no movement there at all.
Feels very stiff and very smooth.
The leverage ratios on the lever itself,
between the Code, the Guide and the G2 SwingLink brakes
is now actually all the same, so while the power
can differ between, say the Code and the G2 slightly,
they will feel the same at the lever,
so you've the same consistency amongst all the brakes.
And interestingly SRAM has actually improved
the way that they manufacture the brakes,
so as well as making them slightly better
and having more consistency in that,
they've actually reduced the cost
so they can offer you more for your hard-earned cash.
Now here's another small thing
that really pleases me about these brakes,
they've got slightly new hoses on them.
Now have you ever noticed that sometimes
brake hoses follow their own path,
they get coiled up, they get kinks, and they deform?
Especially if they've been off the bike
and they've been in storage, for example,
where they've been coiled up.
Now this has always bugged me
because it gives messy cables, messy cockpit.
No-one likes a messy cockpit do they?
And clearly it annoyed one of the designers at SRAM as well.
So they've gone back to the drawing board
and they've specced brand new brake hoses on them,
which visually don't look much different,
they're slightly more gloss on the previous Guide brakes
and these are a matte black on these new ones,
but they feel slightly differently,
and they're far more resistant to kinks and deforming.
Now the caliper itself is a brand new design,
it's a completely new piece of kit from SRAM.
Now it has the same hose connection as the previous one,
so all the fittings will continue to work,
and it uses the same brake pad shape as well.
SRAM have taken everything they learnt
from making the Code caliper,
which is bigger, heavier, and more powerful,
and basically developed a smaller, lighter version of it.
Now in order to increase the brake power of the G2 caliper,
they needed some more bulk on it
and they needed to basically
decrease the size of the pad pocket,
which again adds more material
around the rest of the brake caliper.
Now this effectively reduces caliper splay.
Basically the caliper wanting to, sort of,
flex slightly under braking.
You think how much force is going from a brake lever,
with lots of leverage, forcing fluid through a line
and into those pistons.
You know, what you want is for those pistons
to just grab that disc rotor securely.
If there's any sort of flex, you're losing power there.
So that is what these are designed to minimize.
Now during the process of manufacturing the G2 caliper
they've actually refined the way
that they actually build the calipers.
There's an upside, it means the piston
and the seal interface is much better,
the way it's engineered,
and it also means that,
as a slight upside as well in performance terms,
the bite point stays consistent throughout pad life,
which means the lever will stay in the same place
no matter how worn out your brake pads are.
And I know for one, it drives me mad having to twiddle
the knobs on brake levers to sort of take up
the compensation as pads wear,
it shouldn't happen and it will not happen with the G2.
(energetic music)
So what are they actually like to use then?
Well, they're brake levers aren't they?
So they sit on the bars,
they don't do anything until you want them to,
they sit there quietly, you adjust to reach the bite point,
all that sort of stuff.
Look, this isn't a review
so I'm not going to treat it like one,
but there are a few more points that we still need to cover.
They are indeed very powerful brakes,
but how you set them up is entirely up to you
and it does make a difference.
Whether that's down to the pad material or the rotor size.
I've got 180s on here, you might feel like you need 200s,
or indeed 220 millimeters, it's entirely up to you
how much power you want to get out of these brakes.
SRAM say power-wise they're somewhere between
the Guide S4 four-piston brake
and the Code downhill brake, or the freeride brake.
Ultimately they're very powerful brakes,
and 7% more powerful in fact
than the previous generation of Guide brakes.
Cool.
Now having more braking power is certainly
a great thing for mountain bike to have,
any mountain biker.
And ultimately means you're gonna be able to ride faster
and have less fatigue, but it's not always that simple.
Now there are a number of different factors
you have to take into account with putting
a quality set of brakes onto a bike.
Now, your tires are just one of them.
Are they good quality tires that have got a tread design
that suits where you ride?
Have you got them at a suitable pressure,
that enables the tire to deform
and give enough traction when you're braking?
Have you even got the correct size disc rotors
for the way you ride, how heavy you are,
and the type of terrain you're likely to be riding?
Definitely something to take into account.
Now of course suspension set up dramatically effects
the braking of a bike.
If your suspension isn't dialed in correctly
with sufficient sag for your body weight
and your riding style, then you're likely
to lose traction more than you are slow down,
i.e. grab a handful of brake
and your wheel's gonna slide out.
That's not gonna have the desired effect.
And now finally the biggest thing is your body position
and the way that you actively control the brakes.
You get all of those things right,
and you put a set of these on your bike,
and you've got some immensely powerful
and predictable brakes.
(bike rattling)
Okay so what're they like to set up and maintain?
Well, easy, in a word.
So first up, they've got their Tri-Align system
so for when you're actually
setting up the calipers themselves.
Means you can actually adjust the caliper angles
as well as in and out, up and down, all that business.
So, dead easy to center around the disc rotor for no rub.
Added to that that there's slightly more distance
between the pad and the rotor itself now,
so, dead easy to set that up.
And when it comes to the levers,
well this is even easier.
So if I just bring the levers in.
Firstly they've got the Matchmaker system
so it's dead easy to set your brakes up
and have your shifter on the underneath there.
And then, this is one of the coolest things,
so if I just undo the clamp here and you will see,
on some other brake levers
you have a left and a right specific,
which means if you run your front brake on the right,
for example moto like we do here in the UK,
it means you might have to swap the cables or hoses over
and that's a bit of a problem,
whereas if you want your brakes, I dunno,
let's, shall we call it, the wrong way around,
maybe, something like that,
nice and easy just to flip them over,
ambidextrous levers, brilliant.
So that means no bleeding, no fuss,
if you want to swap the brakes over
to suit riders from different continents.
And finally, brake pads, which is the last thing.
So there's now different options.
Before they previously had their Organic pad
and they had a metal pad,
now there's two organic pads and one metal pad.
So the metal pad, they're very hard wearing,
they're very powerful.
They do need to sort of get up to temperature
to work for maximum effect, so they don't suit all riders.
Now with the organic pads,
previously they just had the black pad,
this still exists only it's known as the Quiet pad now.
They've also got the Power pad.
Now the Power pad, it's got a hell of a lot more bite to it
than the original Quiet pad does,
and it's also got a gray backing plate for visibility.
Does make a little bit more noise than the Quiet pad,
but there you go, there's three options available for you.
Can I use them on e-bikes?
Yeah, of course, you can use the G2 brakes
on e-bikes, there's plenty of power there,
but they do make the Guide RE,
which is specifically designed for e-bikes.
Although perhaps if you're more of a shuttle based rider,
using your e-bike to get you to the top of hills
in order to shred those downhills,
perhaps the Code might be a better option for you
seeing as it's gravity focused riding,
and you're gonna be making the most
of having all that power, loads of traction.
And for some pricing and details,
firstly the G2 RSC,
they retail for 180 US dollars,
that's 190 in euros,
and 170 pounds in UK sterling.
Now they weigh 255 grams, that's for an 850 mil hose,
including the fluid in there.
Now for the G2 Ultimate,
they retail for 280 US dollars,
or 290 euros, and 265 pound sterling.
And they weigh just 242 grams,
for a full 850 mil length with fluid.
So there we go, that is our first look
of the brand new SRAM G2 brakes.
If you wanna know anything else, you've got any comments,
let us know underneath this video,
and in the meantime if you want a couple more related videos
for learning how to bleed brakes like this
I've got the Bleeding Edge feature, click down here.
And if you want to learn about the SRAM AXS system,
click down here.
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