Brake and Clutch Levers from China.

£15.00, and arrived in eight days.

More pics and a report on the quality and fitting to follow.

Looking forward to a review as I need new ones

They look pretty nice, interested to see how they fit & may order some. Cheers.

Paul

Ordered and replaced mine with these before bike got written off, fit sweet as a nut, no fettling required seemed pretty good quality shame only seen 7 days active service!!

is that £15 delivered?
That's cheap!!
I might get some.

nickadam wrote:Is that £15 delivered?...

The exact price would have been £15.88 inc' delivery, but I was worried that the 88p would take my over the *£15.00 limit set by HMRC for imported goods outside of the EU. So, I asked the seller if he would sell them to me for £15.00 because of this and he said yes. As it turned out, the value of the goods entered on the customs declaration was written down as US dollars (USD) which was the equivalent to slightly less than £15.00, so I had nothing to worry about.

I shall be in the garage today (Sunday) fitting them and taking pics which I hope to post here later tonight.

I the meantime here is a so you can see what this seller has to offer. There are quite a few people selling replacement levers and some will let you mix and match and specify what colour adjuster you would like, so take your time before you decide to buy.

*Any goods above £15.00 will incur vat and an extra £8.00 Royal Mail handling charge.

Well, there is good news and bad news.

The good news... The brake lever was installed in under ten minutes and fitted perfectly.








The bad news... The clutch lever pivot plate was too small, 5mm narrower than the standard lever. The standard lever is 19.5mm thick and the Chinese lever is 14.5mm thick. Also, the bushing that was included was too big for the 6mm pivot bolt that passes through it.





When I removed the standard clutch lever I found it didn't have a bushing - probably lost while it was with one of the two previous owners - so I didn't have the option of using that one instead.

I'm hoping that I have been given the wrong pivot plate by mistake and that they will send out the correct one. It has the number Y688 stamped into it which should help identify it.

I'll keep you updated, but right now I would not recommend that anyone buys these levers if you want a fuss free swap over. But, if you're willing to start adding shims/washers to either side of the lever - which I will probably end up doing - then go right ahead and buy some.

---

Edited: 10 March 2015. Adding shims for a perfect fit.

I decided to use nylon washers to fill the gap either side of the lever. I bought some M8 washers which gave me the correct outside diameter and then enlarged the 8mm hole to 10mm which is a nice fit around the brass bushing/collar. The washers were 1.6mm thick and had to be reduced to the ideal thickness. Using emery paper I reduced two washers to 1.5mm thick and two down to 1.0mm and then paired a 1.5 and 1.0mm together giving me a total thickness of 2.5mm. This has to be done for both sides of the lever pivot area so that the missing 5mm is regained.

I'm really pleased with the finished result!

Heard good reports and bad about these cheap Chinese levers, good being the anodising wears off quickly, I've also heard of a couple snapping under hard braking, bear this in mind, your putting your life in the hand of a cheap imitation product that reputable manufacturers such as Pazzo & Renthal invest £100s of thousands of pounds in the development of. They insist in the best quality guaranteed back end defect free aluminium extrusion (and pay a hefty premium for) which is machined to exacting tight tolerances before being x-rayed for inter-granular integrity and to check For Faults in the material before being anodised and then x-rayed again prior to shipping.

Having worked with and supplied aluminium to these industries (including Renthal) for a number of years I can tell you the same exacting procedures do not go into these cheap imitations, I would be surprised if they even are 6061-T6.

Be careful in putting your life in the hands of something sold for £15 which costs more than double to make properly, (and they make a profit on that)!!

That's something that crossed my mind also when I saw how far off spec the clutch lever was. :/ (the machining on it is a bit raf also)

I don't fancy the prospect of 150 70mph and a handful of nothing at the end of it.


p.s. This might also be something worth considering when buying a used bike. Any aftermarket parts could look nice, but be very deathtrappy unless they have the docs to prove that they meet acceptable standards.

Not levers, I know, but there is a back-to-back test of some Chinese wheels (for a GSXR, IIRC) compared to the OEM ones in a recent issue of Performance Bikes mag.

They do a whole series of tests, and as you'd expect, the OEM ones come out best, but they also conclude that the Chinese ones are acceptable with no inherent dangerous faults.

bobh wrote:Not levers, I know, but there is a back-to-back test of some Chinese wheels (for a GSXR, IIRC) compared to the OEM ones in a recent issue of Performance Bikes mag.

They do a whole series of tests, and as you'd expect, the OEM ones come out best, but they also conclude that the Chinese ones are acceptable with no inherent dangerous faults.

To be fair we all put our faith in the reliability of certain components when for all we know yamaha/honda etc may have made a piss poor shonky job of putting them together but we buy into the reputation of the brand, the multi-million pounds/dollars/yen that goes into the development, production and testing of them and of course the fact that you have somewhere to go if it does go wrong. I'm pretty sure a lot of these components may be completely fine, made of what they say and do the job they should but ultimately, think back to how much cheap crap you've bought from China/Japan/Indonesia etc and how Much got binned because it broke.

The old adage, you get what you pay for holds water here.

Something else I forgot to mention was that even though we supplied the aluminium from extrusion mills with a high quality reputation, fully quality certified and supplied test certificates to verify the chemical & Mechanical properties of the alumini, Renthal still conducted destructive and none destructive testing of all the aluminium supplied to ensure it exceeded the minimum requirements specified for each grade of aluminium, including aerospace release aluminium cost £35-£50 per kilo. They pass these costs onto the consumer but ultimately, as I was once told, it helps the MD sleep at night knowing he ain't getting slapped with a law suit for causing death to someone with an inferior brake lever

I had a quick look around (5 minutes) to see if there were many reports of them breaking, but didn't see anything.

What I did find was some reports of a different sort of failure (brakes locking up) in a Gixxer forum: http://www.gixxer.com/forums/showthread.php?t=335452
Similar issue here: http://www.zxforums.com/forums/zx-6r-forum/61410-front-brake-lever-issue-wreck-could-use-some-advice.html


p.s. I did see something interesting though.
Someone commented that if you don't really trust them for every day use, they're cheap enough emergency replacements to throw in a bag if you are touring.
(If you can get a clutch lever to fit, which seems to be a common complaint)

I now think I won't bother with these.
If I'm doing a trackday or a blast round the lanes and there is some thing I'm not 100% happy with, or don't quite trust, it takes the fun away.
Also, if hadn't seen swanky looking shorty levers, I would never of even considered my levers needed changing. The standard ones do the job.
I hope you get the clutch lever sorted and they work well, I'm pretty sure they'll be great.
I'll put my £15 towards some new tyres.