LTWOO RX hydro sets

[abedfo]

I purchased a gr9 aluminium set to go on my old cross bike, stupidly I didn't realise that the callipers are indeed flat mount and not post. Instead of buying weird adapters I have paired the ltwoo brifters with shimano SLX callipers. This combination works excellently and I'm super happy with the outcome.

Because i used the SLX callipers I had a spare set of ltwoo gr9 callipers lying around. I decided to also give my roadbike the hydraulic upgrade also and picked up some 105 r7020 brifters. Unfortunately this combination doesn't seem to work aswell as the former. The lever throw on the 105 brifters is long and has no free stroke adjustment. I understand that the shimano 105 road callipers have pad adjustment mechanisms that maybe the ltwoo lacks?. I'll probably try a re bleed first but any advice would be useful!

[TidyDinosaur]

Have you tried squeezing the levers without the wheels in the frame? If you do this carefully you can adjust the pad gap to get brakes to engage much faster. Just take the wheel out, and squeeze the levers while keeping an eye on the movement of the pads. You will see the pads don't do back as far as they did. Put the wheel back in and see if the pads engage faster. If not, repeat the process... Since I found this method online the braking on my bikes with hydraulic disc brakes has much improved...

[jonathanf2]

I ended going back to my mechanical shifters and Juin Tech caliper setup. I couldn't get use to the upshift lever especially for the way I grip the hoods when climbing/sprinting. The upshift lever placement forces me to put one finger around the brake lever. I swapped to a pair of Sensah levers I had laying around. In fact the Sensah shifters are starting to grow on me mainly due the clean look and I think Sensah shifts slightly smoother in the low gear cogs vs Shimano.

At this point I think I'm fully writing off LTwoo shifters.

[TidyDinosaur]

I ended going back to my mechanical shifters and Juin Tech caliper setup. I couldn't get use to the upshift lever especially for the way I grip the hoods when climbing/sprinting. The upshift lever placement forces me to put one finger around the brake lever. I swapped to a pair of Sensah levers I had laying around. In fact the Sensah shifters are starting to grow on me mainly due the clean look and I think Sensah shifts slightly smoother in the low gear cogs vs Shimano.

At this point I think I'm fully writing off LTwoo shifters.

That was an expensive experiment 

[jonathanf2]

That was an expensive experiment 

I'm planning to build a bike for a family member, so I'll probably just put the LTwoo shifters on that bike!   

[abedfo]

Have you tried squeezing the levers without the wheels in the frame? If you do this carefully you can adjust the pad gap to get brakes to engage much faster. Just take the wheel out, and squeeze the levers while keeping an eye on the movement of the pads. You will see the pads don't do back as far as they did. Put the wheel back in and see if the pads engage faster. If not, repeat the process... Since I found this method online the braking on my bikes with hydraulic disc brakes has much improved...

I will try this tomorrow! Thanks for the suggestion

[abedfo]

Have you tried squeezing the levers without the wheels in the frame? If you do this carefully you can adjust the pad gap to get brakes to engage much faster. Just take the wheel out, and squeeze the levers while keeping an eye on the movement of the pads. You will see the pads don't do back as far as they did. Put the wheel back in and see if the pads engage faster. If not, repeat the process... Since I found this method online the braking on my bikes with hydraulic disc brakes has much improved...

Well this was a success, though my ham-fisted initial attempts were a fiasco. My nearest and dearest are all covered in hydraulic oil and there is an oil slick in the garden but hey ho.

Lever feel is much improved, though i think my rotors and or pads are contaminated as stopping power is pretty mediocre. I've given everything a good clean so will see if there is an improvement, if not ill get some better pads in. 

[TidyDinosaur]

Yeah, it was for me also something of a revelation when I discovered this tip on the internet. After setting up my Shimano brakes on my MTB I was not happy with the amount of travel the levers had. I did bleed the brakes again from both sides, but it did not solve the problem so I was kind of disappointed with the brakes... And than I found this tip and it really changed the braking of the bike. They went from mushy and meh to absolutely flawless...

[TidyDinosaur]

Well this was a success, though my ham-fisted initial attempts were a fiasco. My nearest and dearest are all covered in hydraulic oil and there is an oil slick in the garden but hey ho. 

Try brake cleaner (for car discs) on the oil stain

[dsveddy]

At this point I think I'm fully writing off LTwoo shifters.

I'm not quite at the point of fully writing them off, but I am at this point looking into moving to Shimano Ultegra. Back in January when I ordered all of these parts, Ultegra was pretty hard to source cheaply. Nowadays, there's tons of backstock getting sold on ebay and even AE for not much more than LTWOO.

Like you say, the upshift ergonomics just aren't nice, I feel like I am just tolerating them. I have to move my hand back on the hood for every upshift. I've raced with these shifters and it's fine (especially from the drops) but at this point I am done, I just want to run Ultegra because I feel like upshifting from near the lever would be much more comfortable.

[abedfo]

Yeah, it was for me also something of a revelation when I discovered this tip on the internet. After setting up my Shimano brakes on my MTB I was not happy with the amount of travel the levers had. I did bleed the brakes again from both sides, but it did not solve the problem so I was kind of disappointed with the brakes... And than I found this tip and it really changed the braking of the bike. They went from mushy and meh to absolutely flawless...

Sanded my pads and got the contam off. Work really nicely now. Just need a bedding in stage now. Very happy.

[00Garza]

100 miles on my GR9 set and its...ok. Braking is great. I accidentally did the "squeeze without wheel" thing mentioned above totally on accident when removing my bike from the car rack. Now my front brake grabs really well lol!

Shifting is ok. Shifts to harder gears nicely, but is struggling to move to bigger cogs. I think the cable is stock shifter cable fully stretched now and some fine tuning on the indexing will make it much better. I'm wondering if upgrading the cable will improve performance.

Still getting used to the ergonomics of the ltwoo hoods. Might just be my fit that needs some slight adjustments.

[jcr]

Are all the shifting "complaints" due to the Campagnolo style shifting vs. Shimano? Or is the thumb trigger really hard to use?

[Walter-sobchak]

100 miles on my GR9 set and its...ok. Braking is great. I accidentally did the "squeeze without wheel" thing mentioned above totally on accident when removing my bike from the car rack. Now my front brake grabs really well lol!

Shifting is ok. Shifts to harder gears nicely, but is struggling to move to bigger cogs. I think the cable is stock shifter cable fully stretched now and some fine tuning on the indexing will make it much better. I'm wondering if upgrading the cable will improve performance.

Still getting used to the ergonomics of the ltwoo hoods. Might just be my fit that needs some slight adjustments.

Did the replacement shifter work much better than the first?   I just installed my shifters and am having similar bad shifting.

[00Garza]

Are all the shifting "complaints" due to the Campagnolo style shifting vs. Shimano? Or is the thumb trigger really hard to use?

Possibly.
I rode campy on my road bike, so that wasn't a big adjustment for me.