As one of the first mods I did the swap to hydraulic brakes on my radrunner plus. This is a kit from Big Game that comes with the new brake levers, and brake calipers that is surprisingly cheap. You re-use the rotors and the caliper mounts. There is a good install video, which was very helpful, but I would rate this an 8/10 in difficulty, especially if you have a front rack. It took me a solid half day to do it. Having a pre-bled kit was really nice as far as hydraulic installs go!
I live on a steep hill in San Francisco and have a passenger, so I get to put the brakes to the test. I find these probably don't shorten the stopping distance much, but maybe will help on fade. They feel great. The rear is a bit squeaky now, I'm guessing the new pads are more metalic than the olds. Hopefully it beds in and stops being so loud.
Some thoughts...
- Do the trick where you tape the new brake hose to the old brake CABLE to pull the housing through the frame, worked great
- The rear hose is a bit too long, so it doesn't route with the rest of the cables well. I added electrical tape to the outside of the hose where it interferes with my front basket. This is just for abrasion resistance. If I had the patience to bleed it I would shorten it a bit
- The front hose needs to be routed through the handle bar and from behind, as well as some strategic zip-ties along the handle bar to make sure that at "full lock" the hose doesn't interfere with the stock front rack. This was one of the more tricky bits.
- You re-use all the existing caliper brackets and bolts, nothing off the new ones. This isn't clear in the video
- Centering the brakes so they don't drag is always tedious (for any disc brake). It's not just a matter of "clamp and screw" like people make it out to be. It took a lot of fiddling but in the end was good. I found I had to eyeball it and tweak it while the wheel was spinning, get it set, and then clamp down gently and make it tight little by little.
-m