SRAM Pro Disc Brake Bleed Kit [Rider Review]

Our "Rider Review" article series features the honest reviews from verified purchasers of Worldwide Cyclery. They contain the photos, thoughts, feedback & overall review you are looking for. 

Don't put off brake maintenance! If you have SRAM brakes, picking up the SRAM pro disc brake bleed kit should be high on your priority list. Our customer Ari was looking to do some home brake maintenance and got himself the Pro bleed kit. Read on to hear how it went!

Overview

I have always been a buy once, cry once" person. I got into mountain biking in September last year. I ended up deciding to go with Magura brakes but decided to make a change to SRAM because I learned what I wanted after a few months of riding. But that change came with all of the “Dot fluid naysayers”. I enjoy tinkering and always try to be really careful with the bleed process but I was a bit worried hearing all of the horrible stories. I did a bit of research, watched a ton of videos, and decided that the best way to be successful was to make sure I had the right bleed kit. In came a set of G2 RSC brakes and a SRAM pro bleed kit. I am not going to focus on the brakes at all other than to use to provide a use case for the tools.

In the past, I had bled mineral oil systems on both Shimano and Magura brakes. Maybe I just suck but I always had fluid leak during the process and it bothered the living daylights out of me. Both of those systems rely on tubes slipping onto bleed ports, plastic threads, or in Magura’s case, stuffing a plastic nipple into the threaded bleed port on the lever. The SRAM pro bleed kit does away with all of that.

Bleed Experience

The G2 RSC uses the bleeding edge system so it's possible I am not speaking for all brakes. But I only experienced a tiny tiny amount of fluid leakage when removing the syringes and the kit and the brake system mated perfectly. They really did a bang-up job designing the bleeding edge system.

The pro bleed kit comes loaded with pieces for basically any of SRAMs bleeding scenarios. It also included a bottle of DOT fluid. Obviously, an open bottle of DOT fluid isn’t good for very long so you aren’t really going to use this whole bottle unless you are looking to bleed multiple systems at once. I think I used maybe 1/2 of the bottle.

The syringes, connectors, and tubes are the real stars of the show. I snapped a picture of the Shimano standard bleed kit next to a couple of the components in the SRAM pro kit to demonstrate the quality. Hopefully, it is easy to see.

The SRAM stuff is just built to last. And you could say, well there are high-quality Shimano kits. And yes, that’s correct but that’s the point.

I used this kit and had to reflect. Maybe, I had leaks in previous bleeds because I had inexpensive tools.

For example, I have always had issues trying to bleed my rear brakes because I am a short guy trying to manage two syringes 5 feet apart. The SRAM pro kit syringes have a user-friendly plunger top that makes that process much easier. It’s easy to hold, depress, and pull back on when vacuum is necessary. The metal threaded connections also have a free-floating pivot so that you can adjust your position without worrying that you will inadvertently loosen a connection to the lever or the caliper. I think many of my accidental leaks probably occurred from those repositioning efforts after experiencing that free-floating system. In hindsight, I wish I would have snapped some photos during the process but I was too focused on getting it right rather than sharing the tool quality. But I think this part of the design might be the best engineering design I have seen in a long time.

Final Thoughts

Some people may look at the price and get sticker shock. But I can promise you that you will question how much easier the process would have been with the higher-end kit. In this case, I bought it once to avoid crying many times trying to get a decent bleed. I had never bled SRAM brakes and it went smoothly the first time. I attribute a large portion to the quality of this set.