Aliexpress Hydraulic Brakes Thread

[Fat Larry]

Thought it might be good to have a central thread for people to report their experiences and ask questions for Ali's hydraulic brake options given there's lots of separate threads and what a minefield brakes can be.

To start off: My experience with Wheeltop flat mount road callipers that come in their TX wireless group set has been flawless so far. Installed them on a flat bar gravel set up attached to a shimano mt200 lever. Push bleed from the calliper was perfect first time with no faffing about, just one syringe up into a cup. Pads seem decent. Stopping power seems good.  Cannot comment to long term use yet as they're only a few months and half a dozen rides old.

Also running a Tanke branded TRP HY/RD knock off on my commuter. https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005007218455879.html

Again no issues. Braking power was sufficient. Haven't had a lot of time on it yet and probably won't any time soon as i'm not riding the bike its on much. They feel pretty heavy but I don't have an original TRP to compare to.

[Dan S.]

I have the ZRace XG calipers and they’ve been rock solid. Shed a ton of weight on the 105 ones. Had initial issues with bleeding the front caliper, but after a second bleed, everything’s great. Swapped the pads for OG Shimano L05A ones, and the performance doubled.

[lavistaa]

I have the iiipro flat mount 4 piston calipers (hope clones).   A bit didge to bleed as they the old style removeable bleed bolt rather than having a separate “tap” you can nip up before removing the hose.  I use bh90 connectors, olive and hose with no issues. Pads are also unique- look for Hope e4 I believe.   Once on and bled theynare great as well as great looking

[Bender87]

I have the ZRace XG calipers and they’ve been rock solid. Shed a ton of weight on the 105 ones. Had initial issues with bleeding the front caliper, but after a second bleed, everything’s great. Swapped the pads for OG Shimano L05A ones, and the performance doubled.

Same for me with the ZRace XG, bleeding is a bit of a mess without a nice bleeding screw like on shimano ones.
And also the default pads are okayisch, but they make noise and are far behind the L05A pads performence.
I use them with the Wheeltop EDS TX shifters.

[tez]

Ive used the Ltwoo hydro calipers (original version with all those adapters) and the braking was good with the stock egg roll pads.

Currenly running the original style Wheeltop flat mount calipers and they have good performance too. Stock pads were noisy so I put some Bucklos branded L05 compatible pads in and they again work well.

[RickyM]

I have the Zrace as others mentioned here (the blue ones)
No problems with bleeding. I use them in my BXT145 with Wheeltop EDS tx.
I haven´t change the pads yet, but the wheels still lock when I press the brake.

[Tijoe]

I went all in on the IIIPro MTB E4 brakes starting back in Nov. 2022.   I purchased and tried to run 4 sets of these brakes on my bike builds.   My conclusion after wasting endless hours trying to get them to work reliably is that they are garbage!  They are too hard to bleed to get all the air out.   I also discovered that it appears that if you let the brake pads get worn out over 1/2 way, the seals start to suck air back into the the calipers.  This drove me crazy wondering why a couple of my brake sets worked well, and the other 2 sets kept having problems.  I replaced the seals, and the problems didn't go away. Then I purchased a Hope Tech E4 brake set, converted one of the IIIPro calipers to run DOT3 fluid, and was able to confirm that the new seals still sucked in air despite having new DOT3 compatible seals.
I only have one set left in operation, on the bike I ride the least.

 lavistaa, I suspect that the flat mount PRO III calipers are basically the same IIIPro caliper design, so don't let you pads get too worn out, or you will probably start suffering the same caliber failures as I did.

Regarding Wheeltop brake calipers.  I've been running the original RA700 flat mount calipers for over 2 years without any problems.  They have been fantastic calipers to date.   I had a problem with my shift levers where the pistons in the lever set locked up solid.  I replaced the lever set about 1.5 years ago and all has been well since.  All I can say is positives regarding the Wheetop road calipers.

I tried a set of ZTTO M840 MTB 4 Piston Hydraulic Disc Brakes back in 2023, and didn't like them.  Not very good modulation and I didn't think that they had very good stopping power.

Frog wake FV4-L:  I have been running one of these as my front brake on my bikepacking rig for about 9 months now, 2000+ mile of heavy duty work, and have been very please with this brake so far. To date, thumbs up so far.

In general, I am making my comparisons of what is a "good brake" to my Hope Tech E4s, and Shimano XT brakes.

I'd like to hear more about riders experience with Lewis brakes.   (They are too expensive now versus a couple of years ago, but I still have interest in them.)

[00Garza]

I had the original ltwoo calipers on my first gravel build. They worked great at first, but one of the calipers started dragging on the rotor on hot days. Rebled but the issue kept coming back. Eventually replaced with GRX calipers.

The second set from my eGR group have been fine with no issues.

[Fat Larry]

I went all in on the IIIPro MTB E4 brakes starting back in Nov. 2022.   I purchased and tried to run 4 sets of these brakes on my bike builds.   My conclusion after wasting endless hours trying to get them to work reliably is that they are garbage!  They are too hard to bleed to get all the air out.   I also discovered that it appears that if you let the brake pads get worn out over 1/2 way, the seals start to suck air back into the the calipers.  This drove me crazy wondering why a couple of my brake sets worked well, and the other 2 sets kept having problems.  I replaced the seals, and the problems didn't go away. Then I purchased a Hope Tech E4 brake set, converted one of the IIIPro calipers to run DOT3 fluid, and was able to confirm that the new seals still sucked in air despite having new DOT3 compatible seals.
I only have one set left in operation, on the bike I ride the least.

 lavistaa, I suspect that the flat mount PRO III calipers are basically the same IIIPro caliper design, so don't let you pads get too worn out, or you will probably start suffering the same caliber failures as I did.

Regarding Wheeltop brake calipers.  I've been running the original RA700 flat mount calipers for over 2 years without any problems.  They have been fantastic calipers to date.   I had a problem with my shift levers where the pistons in the lever set locked up solid.  I replaced the lever set about 1.5 years ago and all has been well since.  All I can say is positives regarding the Wheetop road calipers.

I tried a set of ZTTO M840 MTB 4 Piston Hydraulic Disc Brakes back in 2023, and didn't like them.  Not very good modulation and I didn't think that they had very good stopping power.

Frog wake FV4-L:  I have been running one of these as my front brake on my bikepacking rig for about 9 months now, 2000+ mile of heavy duty work, and have been very please with this brake so far. To date, thumbs up so far.

In general, I am making my comparisons of what is a "good brake" to my Hope Tech E4s, and Shimano XT brakes.

I'd like to hear more about riders experience with Lewis brakes.   (They are too expensive now versus a couple of years ago, but I still have interest in them.)

I've seen some slightly negative things around Lewis brakes recently. Something along the lines of lacking power and feeling wooden. No experience in real life with them though.

For an expensive Chinese brake these look interesting. SUHR R740

h ttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJ8cHQxifDg (broke the link because the forum is doing weird things with youtube links).

[Tijoe]

I've seen some slightly negative things around Lewis brakes recently. Something along the lines of lacking power and feeling wooden. No experience in real life with them though.

For an expensive Chinese brake these look interesting. SUHR R740

I watched the video, and looked at their website.   I am not too impressed based on the price.  For the $450 price range, I'd stick with Hope Tech brakes, or Magura.  I'd like to examine a set in person and look closely at the caliper's pistons and seals.   The levers and piston actuation/reservoir don't look too different from the IIIPro brakes.  It would be interesting to find out what sets these brakes apart, versus some of the other less expensive Chinese 4 piston caliper offerings.

[zaphodbeeblebrox]

I've bought a set of lewis lh4s and they are ok. They look cool and the machining is nice, but performance didn't seem to be anything special. I found them to be in between sram and shimano brakes mtb brakes in terms of feel. Very usable and I took them on my trail bike to a bike park a few times and they worked all day no problem. Bleeding is very finicky, took me several tries to get a good bleed, you need to take the lever off the bar and rotate it around a bunch to get all the air out. As someone who prefers the light and short throw shimano feel I don't think they're worth it over just shimano slx/xt. But by no means a bad set of brakes.

[Fat Larry]

These are interesting h ttps://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005013172828792.html

Four piston with quick release hoses and adjustable lever blades, not sure why you'd want either of those but it's interesting none the less.

Was looking at the Frog Wake's again and noticed the pistons are resin which isn't hugely confidence inspiring.

[frewster]

Those Rush brakes are interesting. They seem to have put some thought into the porting in the caliper to make it less likely to retain air bubbles, which is good to see.

[Tijoe]

Back when I was trying to understand why the IIIPpro calipers kept losing their pressure, I started mapping out all of the available Aliexpress sold 4-piston one-piece calipers, and the different brake lever designs,  Most of the different brands were about 80% the same design, where the CNC'd aluminum calipers used 16mm pistons are all spaced the same distance apart between pistons, with minor variations for what "width rotor" they were listed as being compatible with. From what I gleaned, it appeared to me that the most critical parts of the calipers are the caliper pistons, the tolerances between the bore and OD of the pistons, plus the seal material/s being used.   When I took measurements of the IIIPro calipers I took apart to replace the seals in,  there appears to be a relationship between how far the pistons can travel outwards, versus the width of the seals. When the pads wear over time, the seals become less effective and suck air back into the caliper. 

This is by far not enough to draw conclusions regarding small differences between each brand being sold.  Hence my interest in all of the different 16mm 4-piston mono-block calipers being sold.  - Are all of these calipers using the same internal volumes behind the pistons, and same diameter internal flow bores, and how the external body is machined looks is all that is different,  or are the internals different.   (One approach is that they are all using the same 3-D model of the internal machining and this design approach is common and shared by all the designers/manufacturers, or is each company actually designing their own caliper from the ground up?) 

[Fat Larry]

Frog wake FV4-L:  I have been running one of these as my front brake on my bikepacking rig for about 9 months now, 2000+ mile of heavy duty work, and have been very please with this brake so far. To date, thumbs up so far.

What pads are you running? I was just looking into resin pistons and shimano apparently doesn't rate their calipers with resin pistons for sintered pads.