c3hamby

I bought this Mongoose Otero last year and really have enjoyed it. The major complaint I have is with the brakes, they are Promax Disk brakes.

Performance Bike is telling me that these are 'built to upgrade'.

The problem started when I first got the bike...until I got a carrier I would lay it flat in my Cherokee. When I got it upright, the front brake had 0 pressure. No evidence of a leak present and the pressure would build up once I pumped up the front brake.

The front wheel has never rolled freely. For example, getting the bike in the air and spinning the front wheel, the front wheel would stop spinning soon after. This last weekend I had a flat on the back wheel and remounted the wheel wrong, and it was to the point of being stiff, even after remounting the wheel correctly. Is this a characteristic of disk brakes?

Also had a crash a few months ago and the rear brake lever would intermittenly jam.

Some of these problems are user error obviously, some are not.

I'm replacing the brakes with the same brand for reasons of cost, and PB is giving me a decent deal on them. I do want to upgrade next year, which is about how long the original brakes lasted. The bike shop had some for over 130 per wheel, but I don't have that kind of money right now. And the mechanic wouldn't recommend them anyway, and he is a mountain bike racer himself.

Can somebody recommend some good decent brakes for this bike, brand and model that would deliver better performance and reliability than what I'm getting so far? I pretty much use the bike as it was intended, so I definitely do actual mountain biking with the bike.

Thanks!