SRAM Hydro Brakes vs Hope

[Lewis Moon]

Anyone have any experience with hope 4 pot brakes in a SRAM road group? I have Force hydros now and am not completely happy. They feel a bit weak.

[SDJ]

Well I went from old sram S700 calipers to Hope RX4 in a shimano (briefly campa) setup on my cyclocross and I prefer the Hopes.

For me they rank:
Campagnolo
Hope
Shimano
Sram

Like I said no experience with newer sram hydro calipers though

[Dave]

I have to watch that I don't apply too much brake with force calipers. Even when braking from the hoods, I've started to lift the rear wheel off the ground on a 5% descent.

I use Galfer standard pads. There's more to brake performance than just the calipers. Many brands and types of pads to choose from. I use the stock sram pads on the rear.

If you're heavy, 4 pistons couldn't hurt.

[Hakkalugi]

I’m very please with the DOT version of the Hope 4-piston road brakes. Good modulation, single-finger grip. Great brakes for gravel and for those of us with significant mass. There are 2 versions, RX and RX+, the + is newer and uses a pad that matches their mountain bike pads. The non-plus uses a different pad. I’m pretty sure all Hope pads are made by Galfer, so you can also source those for replacements.

[Lewis Moon]

The issue.may be that I'm running older calipers on an AXS system because I need post mounts.

At 200+ lbs I'm thinking the 4 pot system might be my best bet. Time to start budgeting...
Thanks all.

[vespasianus]

I can tell you from the MTB side, going from 2 pot to 4 pot makes a small bit of difference but nothing like going from 160mm rotors to 180 or better yet, 203's.

On dry roads, from 30 mph, any hydro brake with 160mm rotors should be able stop you forcefully enough to cause bodily harm. SRAM, Shimano, or Campag should all do this without much thought - even at 240 lbs.

[oldpotatoe]

Originally Posted by vespasianus

I can tell you from the MTB side, going from 2 pot to 4 pot makes a small bit of difference but nothing like going from 160mm rotors to 180 or better yet, 203's.

On dry roads, from 30 mph, any hydro brake with 160mm rotors should be able stop you forcefully enough to cause bodily harm. SRAM, Shimano, or Campag should all do this without much thought - even at 240 lbs.

POY...All wet brakes can easily skid tires...or launch one OTH..

[benb]

And on dry roads any good front disc brake should be able to lift the rear wheel and feel very controllable while doing so.

It would be ridiculous for a disc brake to not be strong enough for that when the best rim brakes could do it under perfect conditions. (New pads, clean new rims, perfect tuning, etc. )

[Lewis Moon]

Wow, my brakes are nowhere near that good. In fact, ive had several sets on different bikes that were mediocre. Could it be the Jagwire organic pads?

[slambers3]

I have run rx4s on two sram hydro bikes, and the stock calipers (rival/force/red) on my most recent 3. My feelings are that from a pure performance standpoint the RX4s are marginally better than a properly adjusted stock setup, but not necessarily so good that I need to change. They’re much wider than the stock calipers, which would seem weird on aero-oriented road bike, and the initial bleed/setup is a bit more of a headache than the standard sram calipers.
If I found a set for a good price I’d run them on my gravel bike again.
To echo what others have said, the stock calipers themselves may not be the i issue…jagwire pads do not have the best reputation. I would clean the rotors well and switch to Swissstop, galfer, or even back to oem semi metallic and re-bed the pads before replacing calipers.

[Mark McM]

Originally Posted by vespasianus

I can tell you from the MTB side, going from 2 pot to 4 pot makes a small bit of difference but nothing like going from 160mm rotors to 180 or better yet, 203's.

On dry roads, from 30 mph, any hydro brake with 160mm rotors should be able stop you forcefully enough to cause bodily harm. SRAM, Shimano, or Campag should all do this without much thought - even at 240 lbs.

GCN published a video of test that was to try to determine if larger disc rotors can stop faster. In their testing, 160mm rotors stopped faster on average than 140mm. But I found some other aspects illustrated in their test, some mentioned and others not mentioned, were more interesting.

One thing discussed was that as the test rider became more practiced at emergency braking, his test distance decreased. His initial tests with 160mm rotors had longer stopping distances than his later tests with 140mm rotors. This illustrates how important technique is in braking (in some cases, more important than the brakes themselves).

What the testers didn't mention is that under hard braking, the rear wheel left the ground for some portion of the stop (with both size rotors), and that the rear wheel was off the ground for a larger portion of the time for shorter stops. This illustrates how significant the forward weight transfer is during stopping, and that under the hardest braking the rear brake becomes totally ineffective. (Some riders believe that using both brakes will produce the fastest stops, but this test illustrates that this just isn't so.)

Once the rear wheel begins to lift off the ground, increasing the (front) braking further will raise the rear wheel higher, until the bike goes end-over-end, so obviously the point at which the rear lifts off is the limit of braking force and deceleration rate. But the test rider was able to lift the rear wheel with both the 140mm and 160mm rotors, which means that both could achieve the maximum deceleration rate - so why the difference in braking distance with rotor size? The difference must have been that the larger rotors could reach the rear wheel lift off point (maximum deceleration rate) sooner and/or more controllably.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=48BRZEzXtcA

[Pinned]

Originally Posted by Lewis Moon

Wow, my brakes are nowhere near that good. In fact, ive had several sets on different bikes that were mediocre. Could it be the Jagwire organic pads?

Are these newer, AXS levers? What about the calipers? If both are AXS, something is up. The stock SRAM pads are plenty powerful - replacing them with the "powerful organic" compound would be more than enough for even a heavy rider.

If they're the older SRAM 11sp levers - those feel like mush, but should still stop you. The bleed is very important with those and getting as much fluid as possible into the system is key (which is trickier with the older calipers as well because they do not have the bleeding edge port).

Hope calipers have a really nice feel and plenty of power, but if you are on 11sp levers there is nothing that you can do to get them to feel as good as AXS levers.

[benb]

Originally Posted by Mark McM

What the testers didn't mention is that under hard braking, the rear wheel left the ground for some portion of the stop (with both size rotors), and that the rear wheel was off the ground for a larger portion of the time for shorter stops. This illustrates how significant the forward weight transfer is during stopping, and that under the hardest braking the rear brake becomes totally ineffective. (Some riders believe that using both brakes will produce the fastest stops, but this test illustrates that this just isn't so.)

Once the rear wheel begins to lift off the ground, increasing the (front) braking further will raise the rear wheel higher, until the bike goes end-over-end, so obviously the point at which the rear lifts off is the limit of braking force and deceleration rate. But the test rider was able to lift the rear wheel with both the 140mm and 160mm rotors, which means that both could achieve the maximum deceleration rate - so why the difference in braking distance with rotor size? The difference must have been that the larger rotors could reach the rear wheel lift off point (maximum deceleration rate) sooner and/or more controllably.

I had an interesting discussion with someone elsewhere recently from a MTB perspective. Stuff I was obviously doing but not really thinking about and being told it was pretty useful for me.

On a bike we can shift the CG far more than a motorcycle can. A MTB with a dropper that has been dropped down seems to offer the maximum shift. As you shift your weight back it becomes harder to lift the rear wheel and you can then apply additional rear brake compared to a non-shifted CG and shorten your brake distance. Do it too far and maybe you skid the front, but that seems rare. On something like a motorcycle that is powerful the designers have carefully shifted the CG forward for better acceleration and handling under acceleration and that can make it harder to use the rear brake for maximum braking on top of the fact that your body weight isn't high enough to shift the CG as much.

So it seems like technique can play an even bigger role on a bicycle. It's easy for me to remember going motorcycling at the track and it gets extremely hard to use the rear brake on corner entry cause you're hitting these ripples the cars put in the pavement and the rear suspension is challenged under braking by those ripples. But on a bicycle the rear brake seems so much more effective and easy to apply in hard braking... I think it's cause we naturally shift our weight back so significantly, and we have a significant rear weight bias anyway.

[Dave]

Just clarification. 11 speed e-tap is not AXS. AXS is 12 speed and still e-tap.

[eippo1]

Originally Posted by vespasianus

I can tell you from the MTB side, going from 2 pot to 4 pot makes a small bit of difference but nothing like going from 160mm rotors to 180 or better yet, 203's.

On dry roads, from 30 mph, any hydro brake with 160mm rotors should be able stop you forcefully enough to cause bodily harm. SRAM, Shimano, or Campag should all do this without much thought - even at 240 lbs.

So I have recently put Force on my Lynskey gravel and find they're more than adequate provided they are bled correctly. My experience with SRAM brakes in general is that they're great provided the bleed is good, but the contact pad point is less and they tend to need bleeding sooner than with others. Maybe that's DOT vs. mineral, I dunno.

In my experience with playing around with rotor diameter and 2 vs 4 pistons on my mtbs, I generally found I prefer 4 piston with 180s and that's for my enduro/ trail bike. Just better modulation all around. I put 203s on my short travel bike and then upgraded to 4 piston and do not like that combo at all (and that's with Shimano and the wider contact pad point). I'll be moving the 203 over to my to be built hardtail which will be getting 2 piston brakes.

So my opinion is 4 piston, go with a smaller diameter for better modulation. If 2 piston, go with a larger diameter. I'm running 160s for the Force and find that it feels great.