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The Trenga Story Why you shouldn't buy Trenga's Generation 3 brake kit.Why: I first ordered this kit in March of 99. You see, the stock rear brake doesn't like mud, so I thought a hydraulic brake would be the solution. After reading the great review of the second Generation kit on Blastercentral.com, I ordered the kit. I didn't even know there was a Gen. 3 kit until my kit arrived. Here is the story of my ordeal with Trenga: Description: The kit is fairly complete. It contains: Master cylinder, Master cylinder bracket, two stainless steel brake lines, pedal linkage, 2-piston caliper, caliper bracket, brake pads, and a bottle of brake fluid. Trenga says the caliper and cylinder are designed for racing go-carts, which run over 100mph. They SHOULD be able to stop a Blaster. Installation: This part wasn't too bad. Installing all of the components was easy, Trenga included fairly good instructions. However, the right footguard had to be spaced over. Too bad they didn't say so. The problem was bleeding it. This took two people a few HOURS, using a speed bleeder. They say the DOT 5 fluid included in the kit is hard to bleed. So I see. And yes I know how to bleed brakes, bleeding my custom brake took only 5 minutes. The only other problem is that the 2" extended lines look kind of odd.
Does it work? In a word, NO. When the pedal is pushed down, the pistons push the pads into the disk. Only problem is, when the pedal is released, a spring pushes the pads back away from the disk. Strange. All of your pedal travel is used up just getting the pads to the disk. Right at the bottom there was a tiny bit of braking force, much less than the stock brake. So we adjusted it, and tried it, and adjusted some more. Still no luck. So, we call Trenga. They think my disk it to thin, so we measure it. No it's fine. They asked if we bleeded it correctly. Yes, we did. They gave us some tips on how to adjust it, and we did exactly what they said. And it still didn't work. Trenga was stumped. So they referred us the manufacturer, Enginetics Brake Corp. We talked to them on the phone, and they thought our master cylinder was bad. So we sent them our cylinder, and got a new one in return. We hooked it up, bleed it and tried again. No luck. So, we called Enginetics, who then thought the caliper was bad. We sent them our caliper and they "fixed" it. Again we hooked it up, bleed it and tried it. No surprise it didn't work. As a last attempt, we bought a 3rd party master cylinder. It cost about $100, out of my own pocket. No it didn't help either. Remember those springs that push the pads away from the disk? I figured those could be the problem. I was right, by removing the springs I could get the brake to work wonderfully. Hooray! Now I had a rear brake. I rode it this was for a few days, until I noticed that after 30 miles of riding, my pads were worn out!! Those pads were really, really soft. So, I could use the brake successfully, buying $30 pads every 30 miles. $350 for the price of the kit, plus one dollar per mile for pads. This could get expensive fast. Too expensive for me anyway. I tried to get Trenga to take the kit back and refund my money, but they wouldn't go for that. I gave up a few months ago, and built my own hydraulic brake. So far I'm out around $450, all wasted on their brake. Also, the stainless lines rubbed some paint of my swingarm, and I read that longer travel aftermarket shocks will allow the silencer to squash the caliper. SO PLEASE DON'T WASTE $350 DOLLARS ON WHAT IS IN EFFECT A PAPERWEIGHT. DON'T MAKE MY MISTAKE, DON'T BUY TRENGA'S BRAKE, OR ANYTHING ELSE FROM THIS COMPANY. <If you have any questions/comments, please e-mail at: rockosmith@aol.com |
