Hands down the best brake lever I've ever felt. I finally understood modulation. The light touch on the lever is absurd. But I had to part ways with these when I sold my bike, and I never bought a new set with my new bike. Why? A few lessons learned...Impossible to find Hayes pads in a pinch. The caliper adapter is impossible to find, but a Magura one worked. Need to take off bike to bleed (stupid nowadays). Honestly, if Hayes made this lever compatible with SRAM Codes, game over. I bet everyone would upgrade to this lever while keeping the SRAM caliper/lines. Please do this!!!

I have a 55 pound Specialized Turbo X e-bike that came with single piston brakes. They were okay, but didn't have the stopping power needed. I upgraded about 200 miles ago with front and rear Hayes Dominion A4 brakes. I could never go back! Awesome stopping power - beyond what I expected. All e-bikes should come standard with these!

I put these on my Trek Rail 5 when they first became available and they were all I could ever ask for. I'm 230 packed out and the Rail is another 50 lbs. The modulation and power are unmatched. Unfortunately, that bike was stolen in February. I have been able to replace the bike but have not been able to find an available set for the new ride. I finally gave up and slapped a set of XT on the bike and will be swapping them out for a set of Dominion's if I'm ever able to find them again. The Shimano XT is on/off, that does not work for me after being spoiled by the control of the Dominions.

Will these ever return to stock someday soon?

95-36115-K002

Hands down the absolute best brakes I've ran. I've tried them all, Magura, Shimano, Avid, SRAM, and TRP. I've had 3 sets and they're extremely durable when the small stuff doesn't fail...I'll explain below.

So, on my first set, after about a year of being flawless, somehow the bleed port on the lever stripped out when bleeding after probably 2-3 bleeds (the brakes rarely need bleeding). So when I would pull a vacuum, tons of air would get in. I was an idiot and didn't realize there was two bleed ports on the lever. Long story short, I got a new rear brake.

On that new rear brake, the cross hair alignment stripped into the caliper body while setting it up. Absolutely sucks and shouldn't happen on new brakes, but whatever, I'll just adjust them the original way. Bummer, but I love the brakes so I stuck it out. Plus I purchased second hand so I was out of luck.

Just recently I'm building a brand new bike, obviously chose the Dominion A4s again, and I had a handful of problems setting these up...It started with bleeding after trimming the cables. Both ports at the lever were letting air in when pulling a vacuum. On my third attempt at bleeding (the lever feel just wasn't good enough without a vacuum at the lever), I used some needle nose pliers to really tighten down the bleed syringe. Who knows what this will do for long term longevity...but I had to in order to pull the vacuum, never had to do go this tight while bleeding before. And this was front and rear lever on brand new brakes, purchased from a store brand new. Anyways, I got the lever feel I wanted and a good bleed.

I go to set up the calipers after a long bleed and the rear cross hair alignment screw strips out the caliper rendering the cross hair alignment useless. Not the end of the world, but these are brand new brakes and across my three sets I've purchased, I've had these repeated problems. It's beyond frustrating after spending months trying to source parts for a new bike during COVID, to be all excited to build it, and have this happen from what were some of my favorite products. I can still run the brakes obviously, and they feel great, but man it drives me nuts to spend so much time building a brand new bike and have it not be perfect before it even touches dirt...

All in all, I'll continue running the brakes because their feel is so incredible. Minus these REPEATED small issues I've faced, their durability is second to none. I'll be trying to contact the warranty department and hopefully they can make it right. These brakes still feel insanely incredible and are truly durable if these two areas don't fail on you. The lever bleed ports, and the cross hair alignment.