I've been a long time fan of Shimano brakes, I've had XT 2 pots, XT 4 pots, Saints and loved them. When I've read about people having wandering bite points and micro leaking calipers I've always dismissed it as poor maintenance and not being able to bleed them properly..........until I bought my ebike! My Giant Reign E+1 came with XT brakes (it was one of the reasons that contributed to me wanting it) and from day one the front brake has been crap. I've bled it loads of times, changed pads, tried different types of pads, swapped to a bigger 220mm rotor that was also a bit wider and still my front brake has remained shit. The rear one has been what I expected from past experience, powerful, consistent, all that good stuff but the front has been consistently disappointing. After six months of faffing about, trying to sort my front brake I finally admitted defeat and acknowledged that I have the dreaded caliper micro leak issue so decided to change it. My first thought was to go to Hopes front and rear, I've used Hopes in the past and they've been decent (albeit not as powerful as all my previous Shimano brakes). I'd also been reading about people mixing Magura calipers with Shimano levers and as I love the shape of Shimano levers, Magura MT5s are relatively cheap and I'm pretty sure my problem is a leaking Shimano caliper I decided to give this a go. I sourced a single MT5 for £75 and yesterday fitted the caliper and hose to my XT lever, it was really easy. Today I took it for a test ride and OMG it is so good! Initially it feels like a normal fully functional Shimano brake but where the Shimanos have great bite and power up to a certain point and then the power plateaus, with the Shigura the power just keeps building the harder you pull the lever. I tried an endo turn on a corner where I often do this, it's not strictly needed to get round but it's fun and who doesn't love showing off a little? Today with the same lever pressure and weight shift as usual I had the back end up at 45° and had to let the brake off! Modulation is fine if you're used to Shimano brakes but you need to adjust to the extra power a bit. If you love Shimano brakes but have been having issues with wandering bite point or lack of bite due to micro leakage I'd recommend considering trying a Shigura set up. It's relatively cheap, easy to do and allows you to keep using the sweet Shimano levers. I think I'm going to do my rear brake as well even though it's working fine just because the Shigura set up is better.
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