Hey everyone, welcome to the channel!
When I did the bike check on my Santa Cruz I mentioned the brakes
the 4-piston calipers with 180 rotors as probably being everything you can dream of for a trail bike like this.
Now Shimano has other ideas because they also have the better version of those breaks, the XR race (XTR) version.
These are more expensive than the XT's and in this video I'm going to take a look at them side by side
and see if they are actually worth the extra premium.
XT, SLX and Deore, they all come with the same lever and the difference is here in the type of caliper used with them.
They usually have like a 2-piston or race version and a trail version that is 4-piston
but again they all come with the same lever.
XTR offering is different. They have two types of levers,
what you see here the identical lever with the XT, this would be called the trail version
and the code for it is BL-M9120.
Also here you're gonna see that this is made in Japan
and 22.2 is the diameter of the bar here where the grips and the controls are installed.
On this trail version the master cylinder shape is very similar to the one XT.
The lever shape is the same, you have the same tool-less reach adjust
and you can see here the Free Stroke adjustment on both.
Master cylinder comes in the same XTR light gray as opposed to the XT which is a darker gray.
The ISPEC-EV bar clamp, the new one, is black on all these brakes
and the XTR seems to have that extra cutout most probably just to save weight.
I mentioned the lever blades being identical and you can see the dimples here where your finger rests on it.
However be careful, these blades are not necessarily interchangeable between XTR, XT, SLX, Deore
because they might vary in height right here where they enter the master cylinder.
On the back of this XTR master cylinder you can see extra cutouts versus the XT
so again these are not identical even though they look similar
and the bar clamp that seem to have a deeper cutout here and that's not just to save weight.
Remember, accessories like this Shimano MT500 remote would attach here on the EV band
and this gives you more vertical adjustment.
It's kind of silly how Shimano differentiates their series by having a bigger or smaller cutout here for adjustability.
XTR has the biggest cutout here, XT and SLX have less and Deore has even less adjustment than this.
And I mentioned the XTR Race version of these levers that doesn't look anything like this.
It loses the Reach adjust, it doesn't have the Free Stroke adjustment,
and it doesn't have Servo Wave embedded like you have it on these two levers.
That race lever is used with a smaller 2-piston caliper that only comes in the XTR lineup.
This trail caliper though, the BR-M9120 uses the same new, slimmer design of the XT and SLX
with the big difference being the materials used here,
XTR uses magnesium for the caliper and the master cylinder versus aluminum for all the other brakes.
Magnesium is lighter and stronger however it complicates matters when it comes to installation.
The provided bolts are for 160 millimeter discs, they're made out of titanium,
they have that plastic washer that prevents the titanium from touching the magnesium
because otherwise you can start having corrosion.
And you can see the tiny hole here in the head that is for the safety wire that is provided with them.
The retaining pin for the pads is different in case of the XTR, make sure you use the provided hardware.
And we mentioned the pads and you see the new finned brake pads that come with these brakes.
They are the same used by XT so we're talking about N03A for resin and N04C for metallic pads with fins.
The older pads without fins will fit just fine, something like this D03S which in this case is resin.
To remove the pads, the usual safety clip has to be removed from one side.
You're gonna use a flat head screwdriver, take it out, and here are the pads.
In this case the resin.
Looking inside the caliper, aside from the different material you have the same quad piston
2 x 18mm and 2 x 16 millimeter pistons.
They are made out of ceramic, same quad ceramic pistons are used in the XT and SLX calipers
and the body of the caliper is almost identical
you can see the XTR are being sculpted a little bit more in these areas,
but otherwise you have the benjo connector here up top on the inside,
the BH-90 hose is common for all of these,
the only thing that would be different for XTR is again the bolt, this is made so it can touch magnesium and not corrode
and otherwise you see the bleeding port here at the bottom, same here on XT and SLX.
With these new brakes Shimano introduced new rotors and they are very similar to these MT800s which are XT
but these XTR ones will be painted black over here.
Now with the price of those being twice as much as the MT800
I don't know if I would recommend them even though Shimano says that they provide better cooling.
But these are Center Lock discs, and if you're looking for the six bolt version don't be afraid, the good old RT86, the XT discs work just fine.
If you want to save a little bit of money you can even go for the SLX RT66
these are very good discs that I highly recommend as well.
When I reviewed the XT 4-piston brakes I weighed the front and it came up to 285 grams.
Here is the front XTR at 265g so we're talking about 20 grams difference per brake,
or probably about 40-50 grams difference between the xtr brake set and the XT or SLX equivalent.
In describing the new XTR brakes shimano says stiffer, more braking power, quicker engagement,
but they're all relative to the old generation XTR M9000.
Are they better than the new 4-piston XT???
And to get a sense of that I'm gonna keep my rear brake as an XT
and I am going to install my front brake as an XTR 4-piston.
These brakes are OEM from my friends at Bikecomponents.ca,
whether you get them like this or with the hoses disconnected,
I do have a video on my channel giving you the A-to-Z on how to get these installed properly,
make sure you check that out!
And here we are, XTR front installed next to the XT rear brake, and the feel of the brake is exactly the same
so from this static position I can't tell you the difference between the two.
But I've also taken the same brake configuration, XTR Front and XT Rear to the trails
Alright, let's see how this goes
Holy moly
this is fast!
Okay so what do I think about these new XTR 4-piston brakes versus the XT for piston brakes?
In a nutshell, if you have the money, if you want to save 50 grams by all means get the XTR's.
Back-to-back riding using them together like you see it here
you're not going to notice any difference.
Maybe, just maybe
if you're using them in extreme conditions
the magnesium caliper might make a difference.
I'm very glad that I got to try these out
there are great breaks, again just like the XTs, SLX and even the Deore 4-piston for that matter.
So what kind of brakes do you guys run?
Did you go for the XTR, XTs or the cheaper SLX or Deore?
If you have any questions for me I would love to hear in the comments below.
If you like this video
don't forget to like, subscribe, keep an eye on social,
and until next time hope to see you guys on the trails.
Yoohoo!