I recently had the opportunity to upgrade my XT pods and Avid disc brakes to the new 2005 Shimano XT hydraulic integrated shifter / brake lever pods and XT hydraulic disc brakes. I now have about four hours of trail riding on them and offer the following observations.
Many people think that it is too easy to inadvertently shift when you only wanted to brake. While this did happen to me it only happened once, the learning curve is pretty quick. Shifting the front derailleur is the hardest to get used to as the throw seems a bit long at first, all my other shifts were intuitive and trouble free. Shifting while braking seemed much easier or somehow more natural. In less than an hour I felt that I had mastered the new shifting system. I did drop the chain once during a downshift but that was probably due to my temporary use of a bottom bracket that is five millimeters to wide.
For some reason this integrated system also has a thumb shifter for down shifting. While redundant shifters might be nice for some I think they are a total waste and not useful. When my hands were on the levers I could not reach the thumb levers at all. I found it much more convenient to just flick my fingers up on the lever for very fast shifts.
This system also uses a reverse pull rear derailleur where the spring pulls the chain up the cogs instead of down. In practice this makes for feather light down shifting under heavy loads. I did not notice much difference in the up shift.
Now for the brakes, I have not used hydraulic brakes on my own bikes before so I dont really know what I was expecting. I have used Hayes on a borrowed bike and these levers are not as nice as the current Hayes but better than the flexy composite Hayes levers from a few years back. Stopping power is fine as far as I can tell but I have only used them in wet conditions so not heat related issues would have been evident. I will say that they are no more powerful in effect or feel than my old Avid 180s except that these discs are 6 inches so
I do have a beef with the lack of on the fly brake piston adjustment, if for some reason your pads begin to drag you have to level your shift pods, remove the cap and manually push the pistons back into their sleeves. This makes on the trail adjustments a bad plan for me or anyone who has to ride in the rain a lot. It would be too easy to contaminate the oil with rain water. For the money I would think Shimano could have developed an adjustment method similar to the one Hayes employs.
Many people think that it is too easy to inadvertently shift when you only wanted to brake. While this did happen to me it only happened once, the learning curve is pretty quick. Shifting the front derailleur is the hardest to get used to as the throw seems a bit long at first, all my other shifts were intuitive and trouble free. Shifting while braking seemed much easier or somehow more natural. In less than an hour I felt that I had mastered the new shifting system. I did drop the chain once during a downshift but that was probably due to my temporary use of a bottom bracket that is five millimeters to wide.
For some reason this integrated system also has a thumb shifter for down shifting. While redundant shifters might be nice for some I think they are a total waste and not useful. When my hands were on the levers I could not reach the thumb levers at all. I found it much more convenient to just flick my fingers up on the lever for very fast shifts.
This system also uses a reverse pull rear derailleur where the spring pulls the chain up the cogs instead of down. In practice this makes for feather light down shifting under heavy loads. I did not notice much difference in the up shift.
Now for the brakes, I have not used hydraulic brakes on my own bikes before so I dont really know what I was expecting. I have used Hayes on a borrowed bike and these levers are not as nice as the current Hayes but better than the flexy composite Hayes levers from a few years back. Stopping power is fine as far as I can tell but I have only used them in wet conditions so not heat related issues would have been evident. I will say that they are no more powerful in effect or feel than my old Avid 180s except that these discs are 6 inches so
I do have a beef with the lack of on the fly brake piston adjustment, if for some reason your pads begin to drag you have to level your shift pods, remove the cap and manually push the pistons back into their sleeves. This makes on the trail adjustments a bad plan for me or anyone who has to ride in the rain a lot. It would be too easy to contaminate the oil with rain water. For the money I would think Shimano could have developed an adjustment method similar to the one Hayes employs.
