Avid Juicy 3 vs Magura Julie

well, i prefer the juicy 3s to the julies. the julies are good, but the lever body is plastic and kinda cheap feeling to me

Yeah, the first thing I noticed about the Julies was the plastic. But everybody bashes the Juicy 3's, so the Magura's have got to be better, right?

Any comment on the performance of these two brakes?

I had the Juicy's 3's on my Giant XTC 29er 1 and was not impressed. In fact I like the "cheaper" mechanical BB7 brakes on my Rig better.

mefistofeles said:

I had the Juicy's 3's on my Giant XTC 29er 1 and was not impressed. In fact I like the "cheaper" mechanical BB7 brakes on my Rig better.

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For sure! The juicy 3 is a pretty... umm, i wouldn't say bad, but it's not good! The BB7 is by far my favorite disc brake overall, less to go wrong, easy to troubleshoot, easy to adjust, cheap... they modulate stupidly well... but i use hydros simply because i prefer the feel

Well, this is ages old experience, but I used both Julies and BB5's, and there wasn't a massive amount of difference. If anything, I preferred the BB5's over the Julies for modulation. I use SD Mags, though. If I were picking the two you are looking at though........I would pick the Julies over the Elixrs. I just like the design better.

So, in your opinion, BB5 > Julies, and Julies > Elixirs, so BB5 >> Elixirs?!

Wow, I didn't think the elixirs were that bad!

no, the elixirs are head and shoulders above the julie

I actually got corrected in another post. My Avids are the first generation, and were turned into the BB7's. More powerful brake than the BB5's. Based on that info, I would go with the Julies over the BB5's. Elixrs appear to be more of a light-duty XC brake. I get the feeling people are buying them to use for all-mountain riding, and they're just not up to that task. Probably not so much that they're bad brakes, they're just being used in the wrong application.

Well, I'm definitely running the elixirs on my build, I was debating swapping the J3's to julies on my Hardtail. Sounds like I won't see any significant improvement with the Julies, so I'll stick with the Juicy's.