Growtac Brakes are Now Available!

by Igor

We are pleased to announce that VO is the official importer of Growtac Equal Mechanical Disc Brakes into the USA! We currently have them available in Flat and Post Mount brake styles.

If this is your first time hearing about the company, Growtac is a small engineering and manufacturing firm out of Tokyo, Japan that specializes in cycling products for indoor training - think trainers, rollers, and accessories. More recently, they developed a flat mount disc brake that struck my attention when I stumbled across them on an obscure Japanese Instagram story. 

Function and Feel

As soon as I saw these, I emailed Growtac and ordered up some brakes for evaluation. A few weeks later, they arrived. We unboxed them, mounted them up on my Pass Hunter and got to work testing them out. Immediately, I found a huge difference in stopping quality compared to the previous calipers. When I say quality, I mean the combination of several things including modulation, stiffness, and lever feel.

Brake modulation is the ability to precisely and accurately control the amount of clamping force on a disc rotor with a given amount of lever input. So, the more lever you pull, a similar amount of deceleration should occur. The rider should be able to feather the brakes to scrub speed, stop firmly before corners, and live comfortably on the edge of peak braking before lockup. Over the years, I've used many different cable actuated brakes from nearly every vendor out there, over a wide range of prices. The Equal brakes have an excellent level of brake modulation compared to other cable-actuated brakes and even some hydraulic set ups.

When you actually squeeze the lever, how does it feel through the pull of the lever? Is it rigidly stiff, is it noodly? I think the easiest way to describe the lever feel is stiff, but forgiving. The lever movement is natural, forgiving to hand muscles, and you never feel like you're going to run out of lever throw. At the same time, properly adjusted, these brakes offer a consistent and reliable bite point that acts as a natural end of the cable pull, without room for additional cable flexion at the caliper.

Please note that the stiffer/stronger the levers you use are, the better these brakes are going to feel. Our Grand Cru short-pull brake levers are a great match for these brakes on flatbar builds. Likewise, the  lever feel is going to depend on what dropbar levers you use.

In the past, I've used some brake setups that feel super stiff and good in the stand but lack modulation under moderate braking. I've also tried others where you worry you're going to run out of lever before they get to peak braking. These brakes really seem to be the best we've tried in terms of modulation, lever feel, and adjusting bite point.

What's in the Box?!

When you open the nice, "Build Your Own Bicycle" box, you are greeted with two calipers. We currently have them available in Flat and Post Mount and a variety of colors. Quick side note: at the time I am writing this, the Silver and Black Post Mounts and Black Flat Mounts are in production, but have not arrived yet.

• 2x Growtac Equal Flat Mount Brake Calipers - peep those beautiful calipers!
• 2x road brake cables
• 2x mtb brake cables
• Flat Mount version: 1x front flat mount adaptor for 140mm or 160mm rotor
• 2x compressionless housing (stiff)
• 2x non-compressionless housing (flexy)
• Bunch of housing endcaps
• Mounting hardware specific for flat mount or post mount

The housing uses a combination of compressionless (stiff) and non-compressionless (flexy) lengths. The idea is that you use the flexy length for the aero-routing of the housing under the bar tape. It makes installation for drop and alt-bars super easy compared to full compressionless - all without any perceptible performance difference. It's a nice touch.

We will be carrying our own VO branded flat mount and IS/Post mount adaptors, but it may be a few weeks before they actually arrive. In the meantime, pretty much any vendor's mounts/adaptors should work to mount these brakes up if you have a specific setup or brake mount standard.