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Presumably the answer is yes and there's nothing I can do but do people find that as brakes get used a lot over a long period of time they gradually lose their ability to hold a good pressure . I keep bleeding my rear slx but very quickly lose a solid feel at the lever. I'm assuming it's likely to be master cylinder seal related? Anyone know different or offer advice
Thanks
Are you doing a complete bleed (ie. flush through the whole system with fresh fluid) or just a top up / remove air bleed?
I am just at the point of replacing my 11 year old SLX front brake. Just recently it has started deteriorating despite a full fluid replacement and new pads but it has been on at least 4 different bikes so I feel it doesn't really owe me anything. It's rear partner bought at the same time is still going strong though.
What he said, and also are your pads in decent nick and is your rotor worn?
How old are you talking? My Zee brakes are four or five years old and I've just got one back to feeling good as new with a proper bleed and new pads.
It's a known problem.
Could be 10 yrs + old.
Pads are new , pretty much flushed through with hopefully a good bleed technique I involving removal of caliper to move around and dislodge stubborn air. Never considered disc wear really. All is clean. It's just the lever starts solid but quickly loses solid feel and will almost touch the bar under prolonged hard braking.
I keep thinking it's likely that the master cylinder seals are letting fluid back through due to wear.Don't know if that makes sense.
Thinking of replacing with new deores unless there's a better brakeset to be had for little money?
I has the seals in Magura Marta SLs fail after about 10 years, couldn't get spares for brakes that old, so had to replace the whole unit.
I’ve had this with 2 sets of shimano brakes. It seems like the weather sealing on the master cylinder is poor to nonexistent. A few proper manky rides where the bike gets properly covered and you can end up with grit getting in around the m/c push rod and it then scores the cylinder bore over time. It got pretty obvious on mine because the shifter and dropper post levers were always covered in a fine mist of brake fluid that had leaked out. I was also having to do a lever bleed every time I rode the thing to get a bite point.
Gone for Hope now. All out power isn’t quite as good, but I know I’ll be able to keep them working for many years.