TRP T925 brakes review

My Quintana Roo Seduza initially came with a set of Tektro brakes which were frankly rubbish. I bought these to replace them. They certainly look great and feel really strong, and the build is absolutely faultless. Review.

Front brakeFront brake

Rear brakeRear brake

Initially I ordered from wiggle one front and one rear calliper, only to discover that my frame did not have enough clearance under the down tube for the front brake to be mounted behind the fork. Only 4mm more would have been enough, but that wasn’t the case, so I had to change. After poking around a bit I discovered that I could use a rear brake mounted in front of the fork and use it as the front brake. I wasn’t too much bothered about any marginal aero benefits, so I used the excellent wiggle service to  exchange my front brake for another back one.

The only problem left was that to install a back brake in front of the fork requires a much longer bolt, as the seat stays are usually much thinner than the diameter of any fork, which is especially true on a TT fork with deep blades. Unfortunately, wiggle doesn’t sell long TRP bolts, but TRP itself does for this exact purpose. It’s however in the US only, and costs no less than $10 for the bolt itself. I guess it’s titanium or some other super high grade steel injected with “unobtanium” or other exotic additive!

Nevertheless, I ordered it directly over the phone and received it in less than a week in a padded envelope. Great service! It’s quite expensive for a single bolt, but that saved me fiddling about with trying to mill or adapt a standard bolt from B&Q. It’s for an all too important front brake after all and I really don’t want that to fail at 65kph going downhill!

Installing the brakes is pretty standard. Central bolt to tighten while verifying the alignement, while the brake pads are aligned with a 4mm allen key the normal way, and that’s about it! Doing it with a rim in place without a tyre is even better.

Front brake alignmentFront brake alignment

Rear brake with rimRear brake with rim

What IS different however is the side-pull instead of a vertical one as I am used to. Maybe this design has some aero benefits, but it’s also clear it helps mount the brakes in more crazy places (behind the bottom bracket comes to mind), as the form-factor is reduced quite a lot compared to standard callipers.

Side cable stopSide cable stop

This however has an influence on the whole mechanism and the adjustments available. For example, there is no screw to fine-tune the alignment of the calliper once mounted. It HAS the be centered! The only way to adjust a slight misalignment is quite clever though, in that it involves making one arm or the other harder to move, while adjusting the spring tension with the little screws on each arm. If you tighten the screw on one side, it will make this arm move less than the other, as simple laws of mechanics come into play. That seems to work alright in practice, but it’s not something everyone realises, and I haven’t seen it explained properly on the boxes either.

Resistance adjustmentResistance adjustment

The only other annoying aspect is that there is no quick release. If, like me, you like your brakes to run very very close to the rim for snappy braking, then it’s very tight to remove the wheels, even with 21mm tubulars, and it gets close to impossible with an inflated 24mm Conti Force at the back.

Nevertheless, I’ve since ridden quite a few triathlons from sprint to ironman distances, including a ½ iron in the new forest and another very very wet one in California, and found the stopping power on carbon rims very good. With either deep Planet X wheels and their equinoxe pads, Reynolds assault and their blue cryo pads, or more recently on Zipps firecrest with their cork pads, the braking feels is good and responsive. They’re not as good as a set of ultegras or even 105 on alloy rims, but I’ve never had any problem stopping or found myself erring on the side of caution because they wouldn’t brake enough. They brake really well! And there’s no question they’re much better than the original Tektro. Arguably, I’m also quite a light rider with my 60Kg, so stopping has never been a real problem for me with these brakes, but even on soaked roads with deep carbon rims, I’ve done portions of my last races at more than 40mph and stopping for 90deg turns was always easy and safe.

All in all a very good set of bling brakes, but one just needs to be sure they’ll fit! The front version is intended to be mounted behind the front fork and the jaws are very deep (you couldn’t mount that one at the front of the fork). And once you get over the adjustments and quick release somewhat different than on standard brakes, they’re flawless!

comments

  • IvanDM Sun, 29 Apr 2012 - 16:44

    Dude, I think there is an issue with the images...

  • Matt Sun, 29 Apr 2012 - 18:22

    Mmhhh, indeed, I'll have a look when I'm back home. Thanks!

  • Matt Sun, 29 Apr 2012 - 18:52

    Ok, looks fixed now. I don't know what happened. Let me know!

  • IvanDM Tue, 01 May 2012 - 10:51

    Still no image

  • Matt Tue, 01 May 2012 - 10:57

    I screwed up the DNS entries... Fixing it now!

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