223 rotors, 2 pot brakes and a brake power meter make for a seriously awesome combo! I’m not completely sold on 4 piston brakes but I can be proven wrong!
What happens when you take a super fast rider, put them on the trail they ride more than any other trail, and add a brake power meter?
Who knows?!
Well, until now.
I took top NZ Junior XC rider, Caleb Bottcher to some of his favorite trails to do some testing. I had just gotten a hold of some 223mm Galfer brake rotors and these would fit very nicely on his trail bike.
Top NZ XC rider Caleb Bottcher with his Trek Slash testing some large 223mm brake rotors on the brake power meter
For day 1, we went started by recording the full bedding process on the brake power meter [I’ll post this in a separate post], then went out and did 5 full runs. They were nothing special, but he went very fast and I took the data back for analysis.
We pinpointed numerous sections where Caleb was braking, and he had no idea he was doing so! We also conferred that he could let off the brakes earlier in the turns, even if this meant slowing down more BEFORE the turns.
He went out and practiced the early braking strategy and riding fully committed to turns at a lower speed, and also focused fully on removing unnecessary braking.
The results was his fastest run yet!
Of course Murphy’s law stated that something was going to get messed up after going through all this effort– and it did. While shooting some b-roll after testing, Caleb hit his knee on a sharp rock sticking out of the side of the bench-cut and we had to rush to the emergency room for some stitches. Of all things, his Garmin file was lost, but video analysis confirmed this was the fastest run yet!
Here is a mashup of the testing: