Hey folks! With Shimano just introducing their new brakes
with the XTR M9100,
I just got my hands on a heavily discounted SLX M7000
and also because I have a bit of a collection of brakes over here,
at least a couple of generations or so,
I thought I would take another look of what we have to play with today,
and what has been my experience in using them for the last 4-5 years or so.
Sevvo wave it's what they use in their master cylinder
I-SPEC II is the attachment to the handlebar,
they use mineral oil and ICE TECHNOLOGIES for their pads and the discs.
Over here you're gonna see that in this box I have the left lever,
that comes with a metallic pad with fins,
and the length of that rear hose it's 1.7 meters.
In this corner of the box you see the product code,
and the fact that this is made in Japan.
Looking inside the box, yep, this is the user manual, which is quite generic,
so there's not a lot of information in there.
I would suggest to watch my other videos to find out the details,
but if you look at what's inside,
I mentioned that this is my rear brake,
and you see here, that is the olive and there's an insert right next to it,
but the front brake includes not only the
olive and insert you need to shorten the hoses.
Again, watch my video if you need to see how to do that.
This is a bleeding block, and these are the two pieces of another block
that helps you cut down hoses.
See the screws over there, screws are long enough
to install the brakes for 160mm discs .
Anything but the 160mm discs
requires a spacer or bracket like this.
You can see the longer screws that are required as well.
The finish on the lever is semi-gloss black
with the printed model number here.
Same with the brake lever itself.
You can see the bar clamp, this one is I-SPEC II
which is narrower than the older I-SPEC B
or the newly introduced I-SPEC EV.
This uses Shimano mineral oil, they all do,
The back of the caliper, see again Japan, M7000.
You see that little retaining clip over there?
That is for the pad retaining screw
that's changed from the old SLX, that used to use just a clip.
This is what's called a post mount brake caliper.
Compared to that you can see the XT M8000 lever here.
It has pretty much the same shape, master cylinder is the same.
And printed on the back of the caliper is a different part number,
but aside from the finish I don't think we're gonna see
any difference whatsoever between these two.
SLX front brake - 286 grams.
Compared to that, the XT front brake is 273g.
The rear brake SLX is 301 grams
and I can tell you that the XT is 275 g.
So where are these brakes in the current Shimano lineup?
Usually SLX is the second one in the list.
The one below it would be Deore
that uses the same master cylinder,
but as you can see here on this old Deore M615,
they also removed the reach adjustment from here,
obviously you don't have the free stroke stroke adjustment at all.
Moving up from Deore M6000 to M7000 SLX,
you only get here the reach adjustment,
also if you look at the free stroke adjustment,
it's not really usable.
However people told me that if you use a Snake Eye bit or tool,
you can actually use that screw the same way
that you would here on the XT.
XT being the most feature-rich,
it adds that free stroke adjustment,
and also you can see the finish of the lever here.
It adds the dimples, SLX doesn't have it. This is plain.
And on top of that, it's only the XT Race,
and they have two flavors of their brakes:
One is this, which is XTR Race M9000,
a stripped-down version of everything just for saving weight.
Carbon lever, as you can see no free stroke adjustment,
No SERVO WAVE.
XTR trail version of that - M9020
is pretty much the XT with more exotic materials being used,
think about magnesium caliper and master cylinder.
Also, not too long ago,
they've introduced the XT8020, which is the same brake lever that you see over here,
but with four piston calipers for e-bikes and more gravity oriented disciplines.
Talking about gravity,
same generation with these Deores,
we still have the Shimano Zee and Saint
also with four piston calipers.
One last thing about brake levers is the installation,
and you see the I-SPEC B bar clamp used in the past.
Then all these new ones use I-SPEC II.
You can see SLX, XT, the new Deore M6000 and the XTR.
I've covered all these in the videos, the installation videos
that I have on my channel.
But the new XTR 12 speed, the m9100,
has moved that bar clamp here somewhere
in the middle of the brake lever
and that is calIed I-SPEC EV.
Obviously, that wouldn't be compatible
with any of the previous generation shifters.
Brake levers aside,
here are two of the designs
they use today on their calipers.
And you see the SLX here
and the bleeding port is on that side,
the hose comes out through what's called a banjo
here on the outer part of your brake caliper.
Looking at the Deore, the bleeding port is on the outside,
and the hose comes out on the inside.
Also it doesn't have a banjo.
I actually prefer that kind of hose routing
because it's not robbing here on the frame at all.
Next to the XT, we already know there are identical,
made out of two pieces that are bolted together here and here.
Painted aluminum material, black and glossy gray.
Finally SLX next to XTR,
if you look carefully you're gonna see that the design of the caliper is identical.
The main difference here being magnesium body versus aluminum.
And also you have titanium bolts here for installation,
and all the other brakes come with steel hardware.
The newly introduced M9100, so the new XTR brakes,
actually go away from this design.
They have the hose coming out here on the inside, similar to Deore,
also don't have a banjo and they have different pads.
For the trail and Enduro version of those,
you have the four potted brakes or four piston calipers,
very similar to XT8020, Zee and Saint,
they actually share the same pads as well.
Talking about pads, we got a bit spoiled by Shimano
because they've only used two dimensions of pads:
you see the wider, bigger ones here,
used for the four piston calipers.
That would be the Saint, the Zee, the M8020
and the new M9100 trail or enduro brakes.
and for everything else
from M6000 all the way up
or even the older generation of brakes,
brakes they all use this size of brake pads.
These pads come in two form factors
what's called a finned, with the cooling fins
and the non finned version.
Also you can see here,
this is resin pad
and this is a metallic brake pad.
The material looks different,
you would choose the resin pads for better modulation and quietness,
you would choose the metallic pads for better fading resistance,
for more durability, and arguably more power.
All these brakes retain the pads in place
in one or two ways.
SLX and up, you have this threaded bolt right here,
3mm Allen, safety clip at the end, that's how you install.
You look at the Deore, it uses a pin like this.
Just insert the pin through the pads
and then use a needle nose pliers
just to bend it at the end.
If your old SLX didn't come with this retaining pin,
you can actually buy it online and it's only a few bucks.
The last thing worth mentioning here is the type of pistons that these calipers use.
I have the SLX here and the XT, you can see the
white pistons over there.
These are made out of ceramic, they are a bit brittle.
Yes, they can break especially if you try to push them in unevenly.
But they do help reducing the brake fade
because they don't transfer that much heat
from the pads to the brake fluid inside.
The Deore piston is black, that is made out of aluminum alloy so no ceramic there
And finally the XTR, even though the pistons look black just like the Deore,
they're actually made of coated ceramic,
so better version of what's found in the XT and SLX.
If you stay with me this long
not only that you're an expert on the current Shimano brake portfolio,
but you probably have some questions.
And let me guess, one of the first questions is
whether I had issues with the m8000 brakes the XT...
And the answer is yes,
I did have some issues with the original
or initial shipments of the XT M8000
that would provide an inconsistent brake bite point.
So on the trail, it would brake here,
then it would brake further down
and that was the symptom.
They replaced them no questions asked.
Moving on, and specifically talking about SLX,
these are brand new to me and never used them.
But from what I've read, they've fixed all the issues
and by now you know that these SLXs
are nothing more than XTs on a different color.
XTR - the ones that I have here
are XTR Race brakes.
I've been using them for quite a while
they're good enough for trail,
I even took them to the local bike park.
However, they're not as powerful as the XTs,
remember the XTR Race doesn't include the SERVO WAVE,
they are the lightest brakes that they have in the portfolio regardless.
If I have to talk about issues with them,
I haven't had the bite point issue,
however, they seem to be a bit more finicky
when it comes to pad adjustment or caliper adjustment around the disc.
Finally the Deore brakes.
This is the previous generation Deore,
but as you can see
uses the same lever shape,
they're using mineral oil and most of the same
technology used on their most expensive brothers,
so for an entry-level brake
that just lasts forever and requires almost zero maintenance,
I would highly recommend those ones.
If I had a bit more money,
I don't know if I would fork for the XTR,
I would probably just go back
all the way down to the SLX
as being probably the best value in their lineup today.
So what about you guys?
What kind of brakes do you use?
Have you had any issues with Shimano's?
Or you forked for the currents SRAM, Hope, TRP, or Magura
that are available out there in the marketplace?
I would love to hear your comments, and ideas, and suggestions.
As usual, if you found this useful
don't forget to LIKE and SUBSCRIBE!
I'll put a lot more information
in the description of the video.
and until next time I hope
to see you folks on the trails.
Cheers guys,
Cheers!