Growtac Equal post mount brake review

 Growtac Equal post mount brakes

I have been using the flat mount Growtac equal brakes on my gravel bike since 2023 and I have no complaints. There were a marked improvement over my SRAM Force hydros which had started rubbing and dragging. If I hear anything like that with the Growtacs I am out with the allen key and give one of the pads a whisker of a turn.

When my friend was in Japan again a while back I got him to pick me up a pair of the post mount versions for my hardtail/bikepacking bike. We had already fitted a nice gold pair on his Singular Gryphon, when we bought my flat mount ones. 

New post mount brakes

Matt's post mount brakes circa 2023

I fitted my new front one with a 180mm rotor in case I found them underpowered on a loaded bike. I paired them with some entry level shimano short-pull flat bar levers. They are not Pauls, but they do work very well, and I am always going to side on function over form - and price of course! With the crappy NZ dollar, I would not being buying these shiny things if I could not get them at the domestic Japanese market price.

Anyway. The Big Finish Line Party bikepacking event was coming up (around 400 kms) and I figured it would be a pretty good test of the Growtacs. 4 days of primo NZ singletrack, on a loaded bike should tell me of any short-comings. I was running the standard pads that they come with which they call "sintered organic", so I was expecting that if the trails were wet I would be experiencing some wear. I do not usually use organic pads if I think it's going to be super wet. My spares were the normal shimano sintered metal pads that I use on my shimano equipped hydraulic braked bike. The Growtac ones are the same shape as the shimano's and are made by Vesrah. 

Set up on my Cannondale Flash bikepacking hardtail

The trails were a little wet, but not overly so. At the end of day one, the Old Ghost road, 93 kms and 2,200 metres climbing, and probably a lot more descending, I gave the pads a little tweak. If you had hydraulic brakes, they would do this themselves. Personally, I don't find it a problem. Knowing how much your brakes have worn is a feature in my view and unless you are riding in wet conditions on organic pads, there's going to be nothing to tweak anyway.

The Old Ghost road

Day 2 we tootled down the coast and took in the new Kawatiri trail. Really nice and family friendly, but not a test for the brakes. 

Day 3 we climbed the Paparoa Trail and down into Ikamatua via the Pike 29 track. A real blast. The twisty decent through the beautiful beech forest was a really good test for the Growtacs and I had zero issues keeping up with my buddy on his hydraulic system. 

Day 4 through Waiuta and Big River was another beauty, but nothing too hard. Just a bit of riding through stream/river beds, and we missed the rain.

Big River on the West Coast

So pretty much nothing to report really. The brakes were rock solid. Nothing to bleed. No contaminated pads. My next event is the Taupo Gravel Grind which I will be doing on my OPEN UP, with the flat mount brakes. Did I mention I really like these brakes! 

Entry level shimano short-pull levers.

The Growtac equal brakes themselves weigh 138 grams each, supposedly the lightest cable operated brakes out there, and should be used with compressionless housing for the best results.

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Growtac Equal brakes review

 When I saw the Growtac Equal cable brakes come onto the market a while back I wondered how good they would be and if they could be a worthy replacement to the randomly dragging Sram Force hydros on my OPEN UP.

My buddy was doing one of his many trips to Japan for work so the timing was right. There are no agents for Growtac in NZ and buying locally in Japan was a smart move.

As soon as he saw mine he decided he needed a pair for himself, his being gold anodised post mount, vs my blue flat mount variants. 

Flat-mount front

Flat-mount rear

All the reviews I'd seen had been good and at least one of them I trusted. I had several sets of Sram red cable brake/shifters in 10 speed mode so I would need to swap the shifter ratchet from my Force hydro 11 speed into one of the 10 speed cable shifter bodies if I was to retain 11-speed life. Easy peasy. I could have also dropped in a 12 speed Ratio-Technology ratchet, but having an extensive collection of 11 speed cassettes and compatible wheels, I was not that keen to dive into 12 speed life, where the cassette spacings are all different. Sram wide, Sram Road, or Shimano - I don't even know if Shimano MTB is the same as Shimano Road, but I do know that Ratio-Technology makes different ratchets for the first 3. But I digress, this story is about brakes, mostly.....

Sram Red 10-speed cable levers with an 11 speed ratchet borrowed from the Hydros. Very light.

The Growtac kit comes with two sets of cables, compressionless and standard. 2x 170 cms of compressionless and 2x 100 cms of standard. They advise you to use combinations of the standard and compressionless (with a joiner) if you are worried about lots of bendy angles or internal routing paths that might make it tricky. I went with full compression-less, which was a bit wider in diameter than the standard.This made it a bit more of a challenge, forcing it through the cable exit holes in my OPEN, compounded by me not having a proper cable routing tool. I got there in the end with the help of the Rides of Japan OPEN building tutorials which are way more extensive than OPEN's.

Growtac's instructions are precise and very simple to follow, although I used the Japanese instructions rather than hunting down the English versions which are online here. The set-up is very simple. Visually align the "notch" in the brake caliper over the disc rotor by tweaking the inboard and outboard pads. When the caliper is centred, tighten down the caliper's mounting bolts - whether it's flat mount or post mount. Then you back off each pad until there is no dragging. The inboard pad is fixed and the outboard pad moves as you apply the brake. With adjustments via a 3 mm allen key here, and via a nut at the cable adjuster. Dragging brake pads are now a thing of the past.

The inner pad adjuster can be tricky to reach with a multi tool if you are running a large cassette so it's best to carry a small 3 mm separate allen key in your kit.

Although the brakes have a small rubber o-ring inline to stop water ingress the rear brake might benefit from a rubber boot to stop water running down into the cable housing.

Of all the tweaks I've done to my OPEN I think this is the most satisfying. The brake lever action is very light and the braking strong - at least the equal of my old hydros. Maybe that's where the brake's name comes from - "Equal" ? 

I have given these brakes a good thrashing on my local trails over the last month and so far they have performed faultlessly. The kind of riding I do is mostly as I would on a hard-tail, running 2.0 inch 650B tires, often linking up Wellington's trails via our urban short-cuts. For gravel riding and commuting I use the 700 c wheels. 

The Equals are running the stock organic pads, completely silently, but I expect to change to sintered metal when the organics wear out. I haven't ridden the bike with a full Bikepacking load on but my gut feeling is that they would be great. I do not feel like I am missing out on any performance compared to my hydros with these brakes, they are strong and predictable. I am running 160 mm rotors and the silence that comes from this set-up makes it worth every cent. 

Some people ask, what about adjustment, hydros do it automatically as they wear, cable brakes don't. Thats a fair point, but you won't be getting any surprises when your pads do wear out, as often happens with hydros, because you will be more aware of the amount of wear, because it's you that is doing the adjusting. I know a lot of people used to bad-mouth BB7s for this, I suspect they are using organic pads. In the Tour Aotearoa which was 3000 kms long I tweaked my BB7s once.

If you are someone who worries about potential issues with hydro brakes while bikepacking then they are totally worth considering. I know people say this does not happen, but I know it happened to a few of us on the first Tour Te Waipounamu, with air in our brake lines.

The Equals should be compatible with any mechanical rim-brake groupsets brakes out there, and there are many.

The brakes are short-pull only, so compatible with road levers or specific flat-bar levers that are built for using with road disc, road calipers, mini-vees, or canti's. Shimano makes many of these levers as do some of the boutique makers.

So far my buddy is really happy with the post-mount versions he has installed on his Singular Gryphon singlespeed, using Tektro singlespeed levers, replacing the BB-7s.

Post-mount front

My bike is set up with Sram Red cable brake/shift levers, probably the lightest road levers there are, so your mileage will vary with the overall weight if you use something else. 

I carefully weighed both the Sram hydro brakes and the Equals as I installed them and was impressed to see that the Equals/Red combo were around 7 grams lighter than the hydros on my medium sized bike. The larger the bike, the more your cabling will weigh, by comparison hydraulic hose is very light.

Weight information

Growtac Equal - front brake:
Front cable (80 cm)
Outer - 46 grams
Inner - 12 grams
Lever - 140
Caliper - 136
Tiny bits - 2 grams
336 grams

Growtac Equal - rear brake:
Rear cable (140 cm)
Outer - 79 grams
Inner - 17 grams
Lever - 140
Caliper - 136
Tiny bits - 2 grams
374 grams
Growtac Equal total = 710 grams

 

Sram Force hydro - front brake
Front sram hydro lever + hose - 246 grams
Caliper - 100 grams
Tiny bits 7 grams
353 grams

Sram Force hydro - rear brake
Rear sram hydro lever + hose - 257 grams
Caliper - 100 grams
Tiny bits 7 grams
364 grams
Sram Force Hydro total = 717 grams

 

Pros

• Strong braking
• Light weight
• Great colours
• Field serviceable
• Shimano compatible pads

Cons

• Inner pad adjuster tricky to access with multi-tool allen key.
• Rear brake cable might benefit from small rubber boot.
• The outside brake adjuster's tiny rubber grommet could be easily get lost

Cheeky Quail during photo session

Related links

https://theradavist.com/growtac-equal-brakes-long-term-review/
https://www.bikegeardatabase.com/gear/growtac-equal
https://bikerumor.com/review-growtac-equal-mechanical-disc-brakes-bicycle/
https://www.bikeradar.com/features/growtac-equal-mechanical-disc-brakes

Growtac Equal brake adjustment
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwINFSxrizI&t=265s

Growtac Equal Brake full break-down
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zWGguSAWM0s

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