What happens when you take the most powerful brake and make it even more powerful? Is it going to be too much? After testing the new Trickstuff MAXIMA brakes for four months, we can finally tell you what they’re capable of.
What should brakes do? The clue’s in the name. They should brake! Ideally, they should be powerful and offer consistent performance while providing great modulation. And if they look great, even better! But Trickstuff’s DIRETTISSIMA brakes already ticked all these boxes! So, in which way are the new MAXIMA better? Following the motto “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”, the people at Trickstuff “only” gave the DIRETTISIMA a few updates.
The most important upgrade is in the new lever, which is now longer and designed to allow for a more progressive fluid displacement inside the hose. Talking of hoses, the brake line of the DIRETTISSIMA has been replaced with a Goodridge braided stainless-steel hose, which comes as standard on all MAXIMA brakes — and also looks incredibly good! Trickstuff’s engineers also updated the pistons in the calipers – the smaller one is now 2 mm wider – and gifted the MAXIMA with a tool-free lever adjustment.
Material: 7075 aircraft aluminium
Oil: Bionol vegetable oil
Price: expectedly € 1,150 with rotors and pads per set
Weight: 1,050 grams including rotors
Availability: summer 2019
Piston diameter: 16 mm/17 mm
Pads: Trickstuff 730 Power (the same profile as Hope V4-pads)
Surprisingly, Trickstuff MAXIMA renounces the olive in the hose/lever connector, so they are incredibly easy to install — hose off, hose on, job done! Before you start you want to make sure that the cable ports on your frame can take the chunkier braided steel-hose. If that’s not the case, just ask your LBS or manufacturer if there are other ways to install the brake on your bike. Bleeding the brakes after assembly is pretty easy too: thread the Bleed-kit syringe into the bleed-port on the lever, suck out the air and push in the brake fluid. If you like a tidy cockpit, you can order Trickstuff’s matching Shimano and SRAM adapter-clamps.
It’s not just us! Even the Atherton DH-racing family loves the MAXIMA!
On the first pulls, we were quite disappointed with the performance of the Trickstuff MAXIMA. Aren’t these meant to be the most powerful brakes on the market? But wait… oh… now, boom! Oh shit! That’s exactly what happened. Compared to other brakes from the competition, the Trickstuff MAXIMA need a lot more time to bed in – only after a long, steep descent did they unleash their full power. Once the Trickstuff MAXIMA are bedded in properly, they provide an insane amount of power.
No matter how fast you’re blazing down the trail, if you jam on the lever, the front wheel locks up without hesitation. As the famous Pirelli advert once said: “power is nothing without control” – and the Trickstuff MAXIMA strike a superb balance in this respect. With every touch of the lever, you can feel the caliper reacting: you can sense the point when the pad touches the disc, then the menacing scraping sound of the brake biting the disc lets you know the raw force of the mind-boggling braking-power is coming. But is this power consistent? In one word, yes! Where other brakes start burning-up, the MAXIMA just start biting harder. And after four months of constant use we didn’t notice any contact-point fluctuations. Only in wet conditions does the Trickstuff MAXIMA tend to squeak a little, but the noise disappears after a few hard brakes.
Conclusion
Are you looking for the perfect brake? Your search is over, here it is! The Trickstuff MAXIMA offers everything you’re looking for in a brake and sets a new, undisputed benchmark in power. Unfortunately, this much performance comes at a price. At € 1,000, they’re no bargain. But then, who doesn’t dream of a brake beautifully machined, with braided stainless-steel hoses that deliver a frightening braking performance? We say, shut up and take my money!
Tops
- Workmanship
- Brake-performance
- Consistency
- Modulation
Flops
- With some frames, the portholes might be too small for the chunky braided stainless-steel hoses
- For most of us, they are just too expensive
More info at trickstuff.de
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