Hey everyone welcome!
Many of you know me for using Shimano brakes for the longest time.
I have countless reviews and comparisons about the 2-piston brakes, you see me using the 4-piston Shimano XT here up front or
4-piston XT front and back on my Santa Cruz Tallboy.
This year though I decided to try something new, and from the many brakes available out there
I decided to use these.
I'm talking about the Italian made Formula brakes, let's take a closer look at them!
And believe it or not one of the main reasons why I'm looking for new brakes is the 4-piston calipers from Shimano.
I mean four pistons means double the trouble you can get sticky pistons
rubbing on your discs it's just more complicated brake system that it has to be.
So can I find a 2-piston system that gives me the same power, modulation and trouble free just like the Shimano 2-piston?
And in my search I came across this article from Enduro magazine
where the various brakes available to us today are compared.
And in that article you're going to see the Formula CURA 2, the 2-piston version compared to
many other 2 and 4-piston brakes just like the XT here,
even though Formula has a 4-piston version of these brakes but I am not planning to use this.
The 2-piston CURA is all I'm looking for especially since
these brakes, believe it or not, even won some downhill championships,
look at Finn Isles or Miranda Miller in Canada.
So what are the details of these new brakes?
On the box you're gonna see this little label where it's gonna mention CURA and the color of the brakes.
In case of the 4-piston it's gonna mention it CURA-4, otherwise on the back
you're going to have here a note telling you that these brakes use the new mineral oil.
Formula actually used to use DOT in the past, not anymore,
all these new brakes are using mineral oil, their own specific blend.
You can find their oil and the other accessories online, I'll put some links in the description as well,
You can see a bleeding kit here that is very very similar to what SRAM uses for their brakes.
Obviously you have all the other little adapters that are needed to install your caliper,
they have their own rotors and I plan to use those and obviously you're gonna find both resin and sintered pads for these brakes.
And because Formula knows that you're gonna shorten the hose first and foremost
they are providing here in the box with an olive and insert.
In that same bag you have a couple of stickers and you can see pretty much everything branded Formula which is a nice touch.
Here's your 2 mounting bolts for the caliper,
and just like with Shimano, both the 2-piston and the 4-piston CURA use the same brake lever or master cylinder
which is actually pretty nicely sculpted you see that master cylinder here right in the center
but nice cutouts here, I assume just to save weight or just to make them look unique.
This is painted aluminum and you can see that glossy finish, you have CURA written over here.
As for the lever blade, this is made out of aluminum as well,
you have a tiny reach adjustment here that's supposed to be done with your fingers
it's pretty tight right now so you can use, I think it's a 2 or 2.5 mm Allen just to adjust your reach.
And on the lever here you don't have any sort of dimples or anything like that that you'll find on the Shimano
but the finish is not glossy so it should provide decent grip.
Very much like SRAM these levers are non-handed so they're universal,
you can install it on both left or right whichever way you want it.
And if you look carefully here where it says Formula mineral oil only, this is a bleeding port.
You do have a bleeding port on both sides so you have one here and you have the same bleeding port here on the other side.
I assume you use whichever one comes on top once installed on your bar.
Here on the inside you're gonna see that these are made in Taiwan.
Bar clamp is a 2-piece, very similar to what others use.
Actually this seems to be compatible with Magura and some Hope breaks available in the market out there.
You see that little arrow showing you the up position that this should be installed in
and they call this the Mixmaster system because you can get adapters for your different shifter or accessories.
You can see my I-SPEC EV adapter here and this for a 12 speed Shimano shifter.
Compared to Shimano you can see the master cylinder being a lot shorter,
otherwise even though the lever arm or blade it's a lot longer
this might give you nice leverage when you're pulling on the blade.
You don't have a bite point adjustment like in the Shimano XT and XTR,
however they recommend adjusting the level of fluid in the master cylinder when bleeding.
Also remember, these are universal whereas the Shimano are handed left or right.
Calipers are made out of 2 pieces, you can see the bolts holding them together,
that will be true for both 2-piston and the 4-piston.
They have a bleeding port either at one end or here on a side in case of the 2-piston,
and this is where you're gonna find more information about the caliper.
Interestingly these seem to be made in Italy as opposed to the levers that were made in Taiwan.
4-piston is no different and you can see how the connection to your hose is fixed so there's no banjo connector over here
so this would be very similar to the Shimano DEORE brakes as opposed to the SLX, XT and XTR
that allow you to change the angle at which the hose come out of the caliper.
By the way, the color of these is called polished black, they also have polished silver and gold believe it or not.
Actually I've seen the gold and they look quite amazing!
Hoses for all of these are black though and you can see Formula written on the one I have here.
They also have a kevlar version of the hoses which is a lot more expensive
and as you see here on the box these hoses are 175 centimeters long, again you don't have front or rear because the levers are universal.
The 2-piston CURA caliper comes with this little spacer inside.
As opposed to that the 4-piston though,
this actually comes with a bleeding block, you can push this in backwards, that is your bleeding block.
For the 2-piston you would have to go for the actual bleeding block provided by the bleeding kit.
You need the bleeding block that's 28 mm wide and 10.8 so 11 mm thick.
Going back to the caliper, this is where they have what's called a Speed Lock, like a quick release type of hose.
I don't have that here but you also see that the spot where you should shorten the hose is definitely
at the master cylinder not at the caliper end.
Also it occurred to me that this little spacer provided with the 2-piston, this can be used just to push the pistons back when you're replacing the pads.
To get to the pads you're gonna have to remove this threaded pin, this is a 3 mm Allen key
but make sure you remove that tiny safety clip first.
And once that's done you just pull out the pads from the top, and the 4-piston caliper.
These are resin pads, original from Formula obviously, but you can go aftermarket
and get more powerful pads, Trickstuff is suggested to be one of the better ones out there.
And one of the reasons why this 2-piston caliper provides you massive power it's got to be the massive pistons.
24 mm pistons being used here on the 2-piston caliper
versus the four, 18 mm tiny pistons used on the 4-piston.
I don't know what they're made of but they look black, probably very similar to what Shimano uses for something like Deore
not the ceramic, white ones for SLX, XT and XTR.
Caliper shape is nicely sculpted just like Shimano and as far as I know CURA doesn't provide you with any finned version of their pads.
The 2-piston seems a bit bulkier than the 2-piston Shimano but that would probably be mostly because of the 24 mm pistons in these CURA brakes.
Weight of these brakes it's impressive ,you're looking at 266 grams for the 4-piston caliper.
The 2-piston it's about 8 grams lighter, again these come with the 1.75 meter long hose,
we are talking XTR weight without the XTR price!
I'm gonna install the two piston as a replacement for my 4-piston XT on the Santa Cruz
and I'm gonna follow the very good video from Formula on how-to install these brakes, how-to bleed them, so I'm not gonna bother you with that.
With them I'm gonna use these 180 mm Formula discs, new design,
they are made in Italy, are the usual 1.85 mm thickness
and weight 164 grams this is not light by any means but they are supposed to be super stiff laterally and prevent unwanted noises so let's get them installed!
T25 Torx to tighten these, what it seems to be stainless steel bolts,
and the usual 4 to 5 Nm to tighten...
And I know I'm supposed to test the brakes
meaning, no brakes?! :)
What can I tell you? Number one, that free stroke that on the Shimano is really free
this gives you a bit of resistance so it just feels better
I still have a little bit of free stroke but right about here it starts to bite and
if I push hard here, I can definitely lock any one of my brakes.
Brakes bedded in
you just have a really solid amount of power on both front and rear brakes
I would say very similar to the Shimano 4-piston
however the power comes differently
you get the lever feel that's a bit more gradual, it's not as abrupt as Shimano but otherwise
from a power standpoint, no questions asked, this is good enough for me, really good enough for me
When breaking, the discs are giving you a very specific hush sound,
it took a bit longer than with other brakes to bed them in
but don't despair, do it right, and so far so good,
I'm really pleased with these 2-piston Formula!
and if you want even more stopping power you know you have the CURA 4 to look at
but like I mentioned, I was trying to replace 4-piston calipers with 2-piston ,
they're powerful enough and so far so good, these CURAs are exactly what I was looking for.
What about you folks? have you ever tried Formula brakes?
Do you have any questions for me?
Let me know in the comments below hope you found this useful if you did don't forget to like, subscribe, and comment,
and until next time hope to see you folks on the trails
why not riding some beautiful downhill?
Cheers guys, cheers!