The difficult thing about building a "budget" bike is that once things go wrong with some components, or you decide to upgrade to better parts, there's a great chance you'll get shocked at how expensive the parts you want are.
Case in point, my rear hybrid brake caliper had a leak. I checked online to buy an exact caliper as a replacement and either they're out of stock or now really expensive.
So I decided to do some research and checked out the fully mechanical SRAM Avid BB7 Road and wow, supposedly they cost about PhP5,000.00 or so per caliper here for the real deal. Yes they do sell replicas online for maybe less than half the price, but why get that right? Still, buy a pair of these would cost more than half what I paid for my bike frame.
I decided to check for cheaper options, because at the moment the gas prices and times require some belt tightening. One option is to buy a brake bleed kit and some mineral oil. I've seen a video on youtube showing how to bleed the brake. This is assuming that the leak was temporary and whatever caused is resolved.
Another option I was thinking of is getting dual piston mechanical brake calipers, some are more expensive than the brakes I got. I have no idea if this is because of inflation, supply and demand, or whatever reason but I do have three options.
The first is the Zoom DB680 and this is my first choice, primarily because these are really cheap. I've watched a review or two on youtube and the biggest concern I have with this is if Shimano brake pads will fit, because I've also heard on youtube that usually switching to original Shimano brake pads improve the braking power a lot. And from what I've seen in online reviews this caliper is sort of weak in braking power, but at least I also know how to bed new pads so hopefully that will help.
My second choice are deez NUTT DA6S calipers. Mostly for the memes ("check out deez NUTTS") and also because I've seen Trace Velo on youtube use the hybrid calipers on his bike, and they seem to provide decent braking.
Finally these TOOPRE calipers. They look the nicest, but the brake calipers and brake pads are really expensive. Non-Shimano brake pads are around PhP300.00 per pair, and from what I heard the original Shimano pads are over PhP600.00 per pair so replacing pads is like buying a new pair of cheapo calipers.
So I'm still undecided what to pick. For now the BB7s are out of the question, and to be honest I'm leaning more on getting the NUTT brakes since my current brakes are Zoom and well, you know what happened.
Out.
