Rather than what have you fettled today, it's a tale of what I've been fettling continuously this last week. So my first attempt to fit the new Hope caliper failed when I snapped the little brass insert that goes into the end of the Hydraulic hose. So with a new one here it was time to start again. Like last time, it would only go a few mm before refusing to go any further, this time though, rather than resort to brute force and ignorance I mulled it over for a day. I decided to try and gently heat the hose up with a hairdryer and I was astonished when it slid in with barely any pressure at all.
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With that done, it was a simple matter to bolt the hose onto the caliper. From there I attempted my first bleed and it soon became apparent that there was another problem that I'd kind of been aware of, but avoiding, namely a sticking master cylinder in the brake lever. This can be common on bikes like mine that are used off-road, year round and subject to a lot of mud being flung up. So nothing for it, but to address that issue, so off came the brake lever and I stripped down the master cylinder. I felt vindicated when the master cylinder assembly (With the spring on in the picture), was stuck in the cylinder, rather than popping free when the pushrod assembly was removed. So with that removed, I gave it a good clean and then a gentle grease with SRAM dot grease.
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With that re-assembled it felt like new and it was time to go back to bleeding the brakes. Boy was that frustrating, I bled them and I bled them, it really took some doing to get the air out from behind all four pistons and from the system in general. Hope has a video about bleeding these brakes, which differs from the instructions provided, which differs again to how you would bleed SRAM brakes. Eventually after combining lots of techniques from lots of methods we arrived at today, where after bedding in the pads we're done! I now have a functioning back brake that feels bloomin brilliant and looks fantastic. Let's just see how long it continues like that.
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