Morning all, I want to swap a pair of guide r levers off one of my bikes and replace them with the guide rs levers from another of my bikes. Is it just a case of undoing the hose bolt at lever end and then bolting that to the other brake lever (obviously taking lever off the bar too). Will it need a full bleed or work without?? Cheers
you'll need to bleed and you'll need a new olive compression fitting.
When you tighten the hose nut it deforms and crushes the olive onto the hose. They are not reusable.
Literally hundreds of threads and videos online going over this.
Ok, cheers mate. I've bled brakes lots of times, but never swapped out a lever before. Thanks for the advice 🙂
I have swapped SRAM levers (RS to RSC) and not had to change the olives etc. As your brake levers will have the same hose nuts / rubber covers, you could try just swapping them. What have you got to lose ? If they weep you will see ?
Could then try a lever bleed.
You shouldn't need to change the olives, assuming you're swapping like for like.
As far as bleeding goes, you may or may not get away with it. Be as careful as possible not to spill any fluid and not to suck air into the system (eg by squeezing the lever while it's detached). Removing the disc and pumping the pads/pistons out as far as possible before removing the levers can also help (then push them back in once the new lever is attached).
Even so, there's a high chance that you'll need to do a bleed.
If you're not cutting the hoses, then you might get away without a bleed - you can pump the levers to advance the pistons, then quickly swap over the levers and tighten them up (an extra pair of hands is useful to get it done quickly and minimise any spills)
Even simpler though - given that SRAM guides are flip flop levers, you don't need to disconnect hoses at all, just disconnect the clamps from the levers and swap them to the opposite side.
Surprised nobody noticed that when watching literally hundreds of videos.
Even simpler though – given that SRAM guides are flip flop levers, you don’t need to disconnect hoses at all, just disconnect the clamps from the levers and swap them to the opposite side.
Surprised nobody noticed that when watching literally hundreds of videos.
Unless I'm reading wrong, he wants to swap them between bikes, not sides.
Hi you lot, thanks for the advice. Yes, i want to remove a set of guide R levers and put on another set of guide rs levers, so i can't just flip the brake levers. Im interested to just try the swap then and see what happens as i won't be cutting any hoses down etc. I'll let you know how i go 🙂
