[i did a quick search and didnt find a thread dedicated to this, if there is, sorry for this and please direct me to it.] Shifter mounting + Brake mounting =.........the challenge of finding the right matchmaker (and there are MILLION variables) AND it can change your "ah let me quickly do a brake set change" to a long night of research and scratching in your spare parts bins. Now something that can puzzle me at 11pm is how to fit my new SRAM Guide brakes to my Shimano XT shifter. I had Hope brakes before and that needed its own 'matchmaker'. I thought there should be a thread here on the hub with pics of how to do these things, a summary where anyone can come to find what ever they need (so please add stuff if you have more info). Patches are the guy to actually do this (he likes writing long posts with pictures etc etc) but it seems like I asked some questions he didnt even know so I will start and throw a few things in that I have found in the last few hours. So the XT shifter I bought (i-spec), it looks like: See the problem? Yes, nothing nice and round that can go around the bar, because it is made to go nicely onto a Shimano brake like so: But because I planned to use it with Hope brakes, I bougth the Hope matchmaker back then, it mounts on shifter like so: And to the bar like so: There are obviously plenty of shifter options and plenty of brake options and yes you can mount them seperately, which is what I considered next. Which would look like this for the brake: And well something like this for the shifter: or where it seems you need/can use one of these: Which does leave you with a 'busy bar' but I am SO desperate to get these damn brakes on that I would have let it happen...IF I had one of those options avaible ...SADLY I dont!!! Here is where the frustation started at 11:30pm last night. And no, you can not mount the shifter with the hope matchmaker and the top half that came with the Hope lever assembly, because neither have thread. Refering to these two parts: So the option I then started looking at is the matchmaker option with the XT shifter and SRAM brake. So it looks like here alone are quite a few options too. Here is what I think will get my bike sorted asap: (I actually think I might have the right little one piece somewhere at home...if not, I might find a friend that do (before day end). Patch did tell me about this website, but I dont think they can help me as fast as I need it: http://problemsolversbike.com/products/mismatch_adapters Randomly here are other options I have found with Hope brakes: More reading: http://www.braggibikes.com/mixmatch/ At least the guides and dropper post lever was easy going...match/love at 1st sight... And this is just great for 'unclutered' bars: Edit 1: 11pm = night..think it is called a tautology
