Bicycle Mechanics - Shimano 105 brakes onto a Trek XO1?

I'm thinking about moving my Shimano 105 brakes from my Trek 5000 to my Trek XO1 as an upgrade over the OEM brakes. I will buy new Ultegra brakes for the 5000. 5000 has 700x23 wheels; XO1 has stock 700x32 wheels. I use the XO1 as my bad weather ride mostly on the road and gravel trails; no true cyclocross competition stuff. Is this move and upgrade possible and easily done?

The X01 has sidepull brakes, I thought it had cantis? Even if there is a hole to bolt the 105s with, you will not have enough clearance for the 32c tires.

Even if there is a hole to bolt the 105s with, you will not have enough clearance for the 32c tires.

Not to mention any sort of reach issues that may arise if the OP were to switch to a narrower tire.

The XO1 does have cantis, by the way.

In what way would this be an upgrade? As in, before we talk about *how* you'll do it, I'm wondering *why*

XO1 is stock Avid Shorty 4 cantis. There is a mounting hole on the front fork, so you could probably put the 105s on there. But there's no such hole on the rear, I think you're out of luck on that.

As for why: I could see wanting to replace the extremely noisy cantis with calipers if you had it set up for more-or-less road use with skinny tires (that's what I do, for better or worse). In fact, I've considered calipers several times, but the combination of those bare canti bosses looking really dorky, plus my inner frugality sends me back for one more tweak of the toe-in to try to kill the noise. Something about the XO1 fork + those Avids though . . . man those suckers can squeal like little piggies.

Short-reach caliper brakes (such as the 105's on your 5000) probably won't work with 32c tires, unless a frame was very carefully designed to make this work (c.f. Surly Pacer). Also, my guess is that the drillings on your frame (put there mainly for mounting fenders) wouldn't be at the right height from the wheel to use short-reach brakes anyway - you'd have to buy long-reach caliper brakes. Or, depending on how far it is from the hole to the rim, you might need to go wtih something really long-reach, like the old dual-pivot brakes (which can be scavenged off an old 10-speed at a garage sale for $10). But this is getting into a lot more work than you'd been looking for, I suspect.