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TRP G-Spec Quadiem disc brake review
The TRP G-Spec Quadiem huge lever and chunky caliper gives off as strong sense they’re built to take some serious abuse and dish out some big forces.
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If you buy the TRP G-Spec Quadiem you’ll need to budget £40-50 for a rotor and around £8-12 for an adapter. And if you want to mount a shifter pods directly to the lever, you’re looking at £7 per side.
Both the lever and caliper on the G-Spec Quadiem are forged aluminium. The caliper features four pistons, which are a hybrid design – steel with a composite insert – to help with heat dissipation. There are also cooling fins machined in the top of the caliper, again to increase surface area and improve cooling.
Compared to SRAM and Shimano brakes, which come up pretty quickly, the G-Spec Quadiem took an age to bed in. We’d done two big rides before the pads started to grip the rotor and even then, the brake didn’t feel that powerful. It does have slightly smaller pistons than the SRAM Code RSC but we reckon the stock pads partly to blame because once we swapped to full sintered there was definitely an improvement.
As a brake designed for gravity riding, the G-Spec Quadiem isn’t that powerful but it’s has light action and is superbly modulated, so would actually make a better trail brake. For a brake with titanium hardware and a polished finish, the price isn’t too bad but we reckon the better brake in the TRP range is the standard Quadiem – same brake but with steel bolts, a painted finish with rotors for £140.