Finally got round to fitting them a few days ago, after a bout of illness has stopped me going out.
So not used in anger yet, but I thought I'd give a few details on how it's gone.
Firstly, they come set up front left hand. which, being British is all wrong for me. First thing to do was swap the levers.
This was as easy as it is with any brake. 8mm spanner at the lever, undo, pull out hose, swap round and luckily no need for a new olive.
The hose is fairly flexible, but doesn't seem to need, nor come with, a barbed end reinforcing thingamy.
Now, I said the separate lever and caliper and hose didn't come filled. that was wrong. the lever has a screw in cap in the end with 10mm spanner flats. the hose has a small screw with a rubber seal to seal the end. fitting is a doddle. cut to length, remove caps and screw, fit lever rubber cap, screw thread compression bit and olive. pop it all together and nip it up.
in theory you shouldn't need to bleed it. however I will. I say will, as the bleed nipples are not a size I've got. the caliper end is M3 (I think), the lever end is M5. I have a multi size kit coming, so I'll update on ease of bleed and exact sizes.
Fitting the calipers to the bike is easy, as you'd expect. The levers are easy enough, it's a similar type setup as avid/sram used, a wrap around clamp with a bolt that runs through the lever but it's worth noting that the edges of the clamp are quite sharp, so watch those carbon bars and make sure the bolt is undone more than needed when adjusting the angle of the lever.
The lever fixing bolt is a torx, couldn't say exactly which size, a T20 sort of fits, but is slack. T25 doesn't fit. it's like a t23, if that was even a size. fairly typical for chinese bolts to be a more vague size than expected. it is steel though, and you do need to give it a bit more effort to close the clamp. I'm going to look for replacements fairly quickly.
Back to the calipers, the pads on the X2 are shimano G04/G03 size. The stock pads look cheaper than anything I've seen before. I swapped them out with a set of used pads from my SLX/XT brakes to give them a try.
Aligning the calipers is easy, but for my bike needed a little fine tuning as they run close to the rotor.
first 'up and down the road' brake test was a little underwhelming. modulation was good, but ultimate power seemed to taper off a little. Now, I'm 90kg (give or take a few portions of cheesecake) and run a 180 rotor up front and 160 at the back, so figured maybe that was it. Then they started to squeal...and squeal.
so, back to the workshop to remove the glazing from the pads and clean them up.
decided to go with new pads instead of the well used ones, just to give the brakes a fair trial.
bought new resin pads, didn't want to risk the additional heat build up from sintered, even though they are my preferred in shimano brakes. Cleaned up the rotors with brake cleaner, cleaned up the caliper pistons, just to make sure there was no oil in there too, a light sanding of the new pads prior to fitting and out I go for a couple of road hill reps to bed the pads in.
immediately different from the near outset.
Modulation is on par with my shimano's, albeit the final bite comes a little longer in, but ultimate power had me endoing down the hill, even with my butt hanging off the back of the saddle. All pretty controllable too, had a couple of nice nose rollers balanced, to my surprise.
The lever feels firm to use, little flex in the lever and only a bit in the lever body on the bar. It has enough shape not to be too narrow and not to wide. it reminds me of the feel of my old Hope Mono Mini's, but with more bite.
ultimate proof will be in the longer riding though, but so far, I'm hopeful (no pun intended)
:-)
