SRAM issues total recall and Stop Use Immediately warning for Red 22 and S700 hydraulic brakes

great way to start the "mass" adoption of road discs

I save it for the village greens

My All-Time Top Cyclist Dinner Party Conversation Starters:

Helmets
Red lights
Hi-Viz
The Rules
TT'ing on A-roads
Riding two abreast
Online or bricks'n'mortar

And now, drumroll please...

Disk brakes.

From both personal-use experience and from fixing or servicing customers and mates' brakes, Shimano and Hope brakes are reliable, rub-free and a piece if piss to bleed and maintain. Not just the pricey Hope stuff, a mate has a basic £500 Carrera with shimano brakes and they just.......work.

Avid brakes - the Juicy 3s on my wife's bike are a bit mushy and the master cylinders always seem to have a light mist of fluid on them, the Elixir CR I had on my Merlin was great right up to the point that a seal went in the lever and fluid leaked out and the brake ceased to function halfway down a descent.

The Avid brakes on various mates bikes fill me eith dread whenever they bring them round to me for tweaking or pad replacement - what should be a 5 minute job never is as I expect largely rub-free operation but rarely achieve it. I'm not a spanner - twirling Yoda but someone with plenty of years experience in bike shops, cytech qualified and someone who's managed to fit Goodridge hoses to his R6 and tested then from 150-0 on more occasions than I ought to admit so I'm not entirely incontinent in the workshop.

A prejudice ceases to be a prejudice if its an opinion based on personal experience and as someone who has old-skool Avid Ultimate and Arch Rival levers and brakes which are enduring things of beauty, it saddens me to see a once-desirable brand so devalued. I'd never choose Avid again, or indeed other SRAM owned products based on my experiences.

I too have strong views on Avid Elixirs; I found my Elixir 3's to be utterly hopeless. They squealed in use and suffered from pad run which couldn't be eliminated despite much fiddling. Worst of all they felt wooden. It got to the stage that I just didn't want to ride my mountain bike, So back in the summer I bought some XT brakes (M785) and what a revelation, no pad rub and no squeal at all and they just sort of work.

^^^ I have strong views on Avid Elixirs...I have four mountain bikes that are in regular rotation and all of them have Elixirs on them.

I really wouldn't ride with anything else, they are a bit of a faff to bleed I'll grant you that, but well worth it as I like the bite and feel of them over just about any other brakes I've used.

I'd probably only ever swap over to Formula brakes for weight savings but I like the simplicity of swapping race wheels/tyre setups between bikes with minimal fuss.

Avid disc brakes?

ask the mountain bike community for their strong views on the misery that Avid disc brakes have brought to many riders over the past decade including the Juicy, Code and Elixir product lines

I use Avid disc brakes on my mountain bike, and have been using their brakes and selling / servicing them for many years..including lots of warranty claims for customers.

Bit like old Manitou forks, with Avid you either got "good ones" or "bad ones" that constantly gave you bother.

Unfortunately when you produce huge numbers of brakes for OE and aftermarket customers, you get many sets of "bad ones" and the use of DOT fluid never helps with long term reliability and piston movement.

The Elixir 7's on my current bike were replaced within 2 months, because the MC in the brakes were 'faulty' and even SRAM TECH could not find a fix

SRAM do have very good warranty backup and I was given the upgraded aftermarket Elixir 7 with carbon levers at no upcharge, cannot complain about that?

Bike was out of action for less than 1 week.

unfortunately the good warranty backup SRAM offer, might be needed more often than not

most of the MTB community see Avid as a swear word and often switch to Shimano for hydro discs

Can we bloody shut up about disc brakes. I'm just sick of this web site being taken over by the for and against disc brakes.

Breaking news : all manufacturers recall all rim brakes due to major design flaws that may inhibit proper functionality. Engineers discovered that by placing the braking surface 20-30mm from the road surface it was extremely prone to contamination from water and other substances that could be present on the road, sometimes resulting in partial or complete loss of braking friction. Furthermore, the abrasion resulting from repeated use of the brake would eventually cause the wheel to fail catastrophically unless the entire rim or wheel was replaced before the damage became too severe.

Honestly, do these people not think before they produce such ridiculous components?

That proves it. Disc brakes are rubbish. I'm off to the garage to have drum brakes put on my car.

As per Premium Rush.....it does indeed seem that 'brakes are death'

Or fit a fixed wheel......

So, as I understand it, you must stop using Sram Hydraulic brakes because you can't stop using Sram Hydraulic Brakes...

Is that right?

ive no idea about any issue with avid disc brakes

but just because avid are having/had problems means all disc brakes arent well proven?

that makes it seem more like the problem is avid's design not disc brake design in general

so all the disc brakes made by shimano, hope etc... which have been produced/developed over the last 15+ years which would prob run into the 100'000's if not millions of brakes units made make disc brakes not well proven?

by the sounds of it the problem is just a poorly designed/sub standard rubber seal that causing the issue.

generally a very easy part to replace but obviously given the number of brake units involved means it will be a mammoth task to get them all returned, replace the seals and ship them back to market

i still cant believe people bash disc brakes, they have been well proven in mtb's for years and when any product is modified for a different market you will have some problems and in this case it seems sram overlooked something

disc brakes are the future for road bikes and my next bike will have them, just wish i could have them on my bmx too (frame design, rider preferences and disc/caliper damage protection issues prevent it)

To all the anti-UCI whingers who whine big-bike-corporations' sad propaganda song of stifled technological development (eg. disk brakes on road bikes now!) — this is a great example of why "wait, test and see" is a good policy. Maybe Pat McQuaid got something right after all.

I'm always grateful to 'early adopters' for paying over-the-odds and risking their necks for our benefit.

On the plus side, if ya can't stop, you can't stop for an Eartha Kitt on the village green.....

!