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XT discs with Avid Elixirs?
I recently purchased a set of Elixirs with 160mm rotors which I love but my new bike has Shimano XT M775 with 180mm rotors. I was thinking of taking the new calipers off and throwing my Elixirs on with the bigger rotors and just wondering if I should be looking at new discs as well? I presumed all discs were pretty much the same but I'm not sure if thats the case.
The other question that comes to mind after all of this is: Am I crazy to take off the XT calipers in the first place? are reading a few reviews on them they sound pretty dam good too!
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Shimano uses mineral oil and Avid use DOT brake fluid. Mix them on the same system (eg XT calipers with Avid master cylinder) and, depending on which fluid you use, you'll stuff the seals on one end or the other. Naturally, when they fail it will be when they are under max load. Major safety hazard. Don't do it, bro.
As for using your Shimano discs with Avid calipers, the Avid discs have a wider track than shimano, so I'm surmising that means wider pads and if you do as you're proposing, your pads will probably run off the inside edge of the brake track and start under-cutting your Shimano rotor spokes.
Not an immediate issue, but you will be having to grind off the lip that will form on your pads as part of monthly maintenance or you can end up grinding through your disc's spokes.
I had this issue with the Hayes Nine brakeset on my last commuter.
Maybe less of an issue with Shimano as teh rotors seem to be of much better wearing alloy steel but it was definitely an Oh shoot! moment when i discovered it on the old Mongoose. Could have been ugly if I'd not picked it up.
I'd be getting some Avid rotors, it staying with Shimano for the whole system.
I use an Avid G3 185 on the rear and run XT levers and calipers (760). I reckon the braking is great! More than I need. On the front I run the same XT's with a Hope M6 floating 205mm rotor (I had to take 1mm off the outer edge to fit it inside the XT caliper. The Hope rotor is insane!
... just to be clear: you can go with a rotor that has a wider brake track than your pad, but it's unwise to go the other way around, which is what is likely if you use XT rotors with Avid calipers. They may have changed it with the current rotor design, but the older ones I run are definitely narrower-tracked than the Avids that came on my son's new (old) bike.... so now that I've qualified my comments into oblivion, my conclusion is you should check carefully.