I looked at the Hope RX4+ 4-piston disc brake callipers nearly two years ago and it’s time to revisit that discussion. The reason is simply something I often repeat in my reviews: I don’t like to descend.
If I had to call out a particular product category, it tends to come up the most often when I am covering something from our best road bike wheels. Wheels, especially deep aero wheels, have an outsized effect on descending stability because of the constant redirection of wind as you come around a curve. Still, it’s hardly limited to that placement. Every time I test a new bike or tyre, descending capabilities are something I pay attention to.
Early in the summer of 2022 this came to a particular head when I headed to Italy. I was there to test product but also to ride the 138km Maratona dles Dolomites course covering 4230 meters of climbing. If that’s hard to picture, what it means is that for almost the entire distance you either climb or descend and both directions are steep.
After a day with that much descending, I decided it was time for an upgrade. I’m not heavy and as such I don’t experience brake fade. Instead, what I notice is that long, steep, and repeated descents cause the brake rotors to warp from the heat. When that happens the pads rub and while Shimano and SRAM systems recover quick enough, it’s annoying. When I got back home I went on an exhaustive search to see what you can do to upgrade the performance of your disc brake system and how well the options worked.
Although I ran through a number of options in that article some were more extreme than others. There’s things like making sure everything is in good working order but there’s also upgraded pads and rotors. All good advice I still stand by but buried at the bottom is a few paragraphs about upgrading your brake callipers and that’s where I discuss the Hope RX4+ brake callipers.
As I write this, it’s been close to two years since I started working on that article. True, we are a few months short but please forgive the exaggeration in the headline. Give or take five months, it’s safe to say I’ve spent a considerable amount of time assessing the Hope Rx4+ system. With the benefit of time, this is why there’s nothing I recommend more often than a brake system upgrade.
What is the Hope RX4+ disc brake system?
The heart of the system is a single piece CNC machined…
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