Hi Eric: Glad you are enjoying your ride too. I had tubular 1080's and they fitted great. My main problem them is that the front 1080 is too deep for anything but the most windless conditions. I dont live in windy area but found them to be really swirly. I swopped out for an 808. I think the rear 1080 is awesome and fast and definitely the best rear wheel other than a disc or sub-9 (although latter doesn't fit on P4). BTW, what is a knee tool? and how do you get your torque wrench in there. There i no clearance for a torque wrench is there?? Chris.

Chris.

I’m glad to hear you didn't damage yourself. I would suggest that down to luck and certainly not good engineering on Cervelo's part. I wasn’t so lucky. I had a car come through a stop sign at me. I would love to be able to report that my p4 brakes aided in avoiding an emergency, instead they contributed. The back brake simply doesn’t work and we are kidding ourselves if we say otherwise. I don’t think anyone would suggest doing and emergency stop with just a front brake. You don’t have to know a lot about riding to know that you are going to end up going over your bars. In my case landing on my shoulder and badly breaking my clavicle. The clavicle was displaced enough to require plating, thus putting an end to training for the world long course champs and world 70.3 champs.

I am sure that someone will comment that the brakes must not have been installed properly. But I know of two other P4 owners whose bikes were built by other very experienced mechanics and none of their brakes work either. It would seem with a whole lot of fiddling these brakes can be made to work a very little bit but after a couple of rides they are totally ineffective again.

If this bike was a car it would be recalled. It is just not safe. Unfortunately most of you won't find this out until unexpected happens.This is my third Cervelo and I have loved them all. The P4 is the a great piece of engineering but you must be able to rely on it to stop it safely

 

 

I don't own a P4 but it sounds strange that brakes work one minute then fail.  Roadie brakes are very simple devices.  Brakes either work or they don't.  It's just a simple mechanical device.

The other contributing factors are that something has come loose, cable stretch, too much heat or pad wear. 

If problems are cable stretch or something loose then that is an installation issue (not tightening bolts or not properly pre-stretching the cables).

If it is not the above, the excessive heat can lead to fast pad wear.  If the area is covered up, no air could be flowing past the brakes/pads/rim surface.  Could the heat be too much because the area is shielded from the cooling wind?  I don't know but thought I'd throw it out there for comment.

Forgot one last possible thing, the flex on the brake mount/surface as a result of heat transfering from the pads to the brakes to the brake mount?

It shouldn't be that difficult to work out the cause of the problem.  For the price you pay for the P4 I'd want to make sure that everything is perfect.  I get grumpy if my setup is not perfect on any of my bikes.

 Hey Chris just to let you know you are right, the braking power of the P4 is not the greatest was one of the first things I noticed as well... Might I suggest changing the pads go with Swiss Stop in my opinion they are the best but I don't think the will fit on the the back brake since the pads are smaller then normal. Actually even worse on my P4 I have the 3T Ventus bar and the brake levers are very small not beefy at all so you can't get a really good grab. These bikes are built to go very fast not to slow down I would suggest but when I put the SS pads in the front it helped out quite a bit just be carefull.

 

Cheers