Trimming Hydro Hoses to Size...

BShow

Member
I just got a new set of brakes and put them on the bike last week. I trimmed the hoses to fit, installed the new olive and clamped everything together with the compression nut. Seems simple enough and all the other brakes I've played with use the same concept, just with slightly different parts. After bedding the pads in, I went for a nice hard ride on them. The brakes were great...

Well, last night I was tooling around the neighborhood with my son and pulled hard on the rear brake to lock up the wheel. I pulled harder than I would under normal riding conditions, but don't think it was any harder than I would potentially pull in a panic stop situation. Well, the hose blew right out of the compression fitting.

My question is, what could I possibly have done wrong or what could have caused this? Are there specific things to check for when you're trimming hoses that aren't so obvious?

I dropped a note to the company's tech support basically asking the same thing. I don't want to openly post the brakes here as I don't want to sway people's opinions on them since it was probably my fault... and they're more or less a sponsor.
 

UtahJoe

Team Workhorse
Team MTBNJ Halter's
I recently had to trim dowm my set of avid x9 brakes. One of the issues I ran into was getting the supplied barb inserted fully into the line once it was cut. If it is not fully seated before trying to clamp everything together will not do it. It will just mangle the olive. They make a too for installing this needle, but I oculdnt find one at my LBS. So I just bought a needle that can be threaded in. This worked perfectly and the olive compressed correctly and has been trouble free. Was the barb bottomed out in the hose before you compressed it?
 

Maurice

New Member
You probably didn't crank down enough on the fitting to make the olive deform. Or the hose wasn't fully inserted or even maybe defective. These are merely compression fittings that deform once and hold the hose by squeezing it. Need a new olive now...

One good way to know you've cranked enough is to count the rotations when you remove a factory installed fitting, and turning the same amount when installing it back on. It can take a good amount of feeling like it's about to strip before it's engaged enough.

Have fun bleeding :)
 

BShow

Member
...One of the issues I ran into was getting the supplied barb inserted fully into the line once it was cut. If it is not fully seated before trying to clamp everything together will not do it. It will just mangle the olive...Was the barb bottomed out in the hose before you compressed it?

Good point... When I installed them initially, I thought that it was fully seated, but now I'm not so sure. I had to pull the olive out of the master cylinder with pliers, so that obviously mangled the barbed part... but from what I could see, the olive/barb was intact before I hit it with pliers.

You probably didn't crank down enough on the fitting to make the olive deform. Or the hose wasn't fully inserted or even maybe defective. These are merely compression fittings that deform once and hold the hose by squeezing it. Need a new olive now...

One good way to know you've cranked enough is to count the rotations when you remove a factory installed fitting, and turning the same amount when installing it back on. It can take a good amount of feeling like it's about to strip before it's engaged enough.

Have fun bleeding :)

Hmm... the olive did look deformed to the point that it should have clamped the hose. Which leads me to think from you and Utah's response; I must not have had the barb seated all the way when I clamped it together. I'm pretty sure that the compression nut was tightened down as far as it could go. it's too late to count rotations... I already effed up the factory setup!

Luckily I do have a bunch of olives, so I can try again (and again, and again, etc). I dont really want to spend Friday night before a race, bleeding my brakes though. I'll likely take a set off another bike this afternoon instead. meh.
 
Top Bottom