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I need to shorten my hoses (and swap them around - they're Euro style at the moment) on new M785 brakes.
I've found this guide which seems to avoid having to bleed the brakes. Handy as I don't have a bleed kit or mineral oil.
I have new oilves but not the thing shown being tapped in with a hammer. The one that looks a little like a cable end cap. Is it re-useable. Has anyone managed to shorten hoses without needing to bleed them afterwards? Embarrassingly, in 20+ years of riding, I'm yet to bleed my own brakes!
Thanks
I used this and worked a treat.
http://www.epicbleedsolutions.com/blog/shorten-shimano-hoses-without-bleeding/
Not sure about the resuse of the barb and olive as I had them but I sure someone will be along shortly
Yes, you can but you have to get them out first. They are barbed so won't pull out easily, if at all. Best bet is to slice the bit of cut-off hose with the insert in lengthways to extract it. Without losing blood to a stanley knife in the process.
Yeah, the barb is reusable, the olive isn't. Easiest way to remove it is to use side cutters ime, cut the hose as short as you can around the barb, then cut it lengthways with the cutters. Careful not to cut the metal obviously but in practice the blades will want to go round the side.
You can also melt it out- take the oring off, set the whole thing on fire, wipe it off when melty.
Just buy a couple of new barbs, if you could get them out you'll make a mess of them in the process.
I always find the hardest part of the whole process is getting the new barbs in.
vice and the yellow inserts and a pein hammer, job done.
Can make do with molgrips instead of the vice too. the tool, not the person, obviously
(awaits obvious Molgrips is a tool comments 🙂 )
OP i used the EpicBleedSolution method a few weeks ago. its a very easy method and means you dont need to re-bleed your brakes.
the barb can be re-used. while doing mine, i managed to push the barb into the hose without putting the olive in first so i had to cut a bit more hose off then slice the hose down the middle to get the barb out again.
The barb is reuseable though as above, it's easiest to cut it out.
The olives aren't reusable, except that I have done a couple of times at least and they've worked fine. You just need to be very careful in how you open them out and then close them again.
Thanks for the replies.
My 2 year old's very jet-lagged (bouncing off the walls when he'd normally be snoring) so it'll have to wait until after work tomorrow.
I've got olives but the LBS is out of stock of barbs.
What would work best to cut the hose? Do cable outer cutters work? I also have a stanley knife.
Cheers
Definitely not cable cutters - that tends to crush them. Just a good sharp knife and at least with Shimanos the oil isn't nasty.
If you don't need to shorten the hoses then don't bother cutting them and trying to remove the barb; they're pretty tricky to cut out anyway, I've tried. Just leave the barb in, slide the old olive off and the new one on. A friend reused olives recently on Zees and had no problems so don't worry too much about them if you don't have new ones.
And cable cutters work fine if that's all you've got - I used some very blunt ones on mine the first time and re-squashed the hoses fine. Stanley blade the second time was a bit neater but both did the job fine in the end.
That was all very easy.
They didn't need to be bled. I did end up needing a Dremel to cut the olive to access the barb though.
Thanks for hte pointers.