TRP Cockpit Adapters

New brakes are one of the most popular aftermarket upgrades for mountain bikers, and TRP brakes have been among the most popular high power brake upgrades in the last few years. Their DHR EVO brakes were their flagship offering for years, and this year they released the EVO Pro brakes that added some features fans were asking for without changing the brake’s DNA. When upgrading to new brakes, you need to make a plan for mounting both your dropper lever and your shifter. Your two options are mounting them to the bars or mounting them directly to your brakes, and I’m going to explain exactly how to mount your dropper lever and your shifter directly to your TRP brakes. If you’re not sure where to start, getting the right adapter seems complicated, but really it’s very straightforward. 

The first step is figuring out whether or not your shifter and dropper lever use an integrated clamp or if they can be mounted directly to a brake. There are some OEM and generally more affordable shifter and dropper lever options with an integrated clamp that cannot be mounted directly to handlebars. If you have one of those, you’re pretty much out of luck, but if you have a mid to high end shifter or dropper lever, it’s very likely that you will be able to mount it to your TRP brakes. It’s very unlikely that you can convert your dropper or shifter with an integrated clamp to be able to mount directly to your brakes, and you’ll have to upgrade to make your single clamp dreams come true. 

Next up is identifying the mounting standard your dropper lever and shifter use. It could be that they use different standards, so make sure to identify both of them independently. Starting with your shifter, there are tons of shifters out there, but not very many mounting standards. The most common is MatchMaker, which is SRAM’s creation and originally only made connections between SRAM products, but now just about every company has MatchMaker compatible components. So if you have a SRAM shifter that doesn’t use an integrated clamp, then it uses a MatchMaker connection. All of TRP’s shifters also use a MatchMaker interface, making the identification very simple with either SRAM or TRP shifters. 

Shimano shifters get a little more tricky, and they use their own I-Spec mounting standard. Over the years, there have been several iterations of I-Spec, including I-Spec A, I-Spec B, I-Spec II, and I-Spec EV. TRP has only made adapters to their brakes for the two newest standards, I-Spec II and I-Spec EV. Shimano’s MX000 generation uses I-Spec II, while all of their newer MX100 and MX150 shifters use I-Spec EV mounting. Unfortunately, if you’ve got an I-Spec A or I-Spec B shifter, TRP doesn’t have a sleek adapter option for you, but there might still be hope of getting something cobbled together with other third party adapters. The only exception to that rule is that the older Slate, Quadiem, and Zurich brakes allow for I-Spec B direct mounting with no adapter required! But it might also be a sign to upgrade to a modern 12 speed drivetrain!

Shimano M8000 XT Shifter with I-Spec II

Shimano M8100 XT Shifter with I-Spec EV

As for dropper levers, it’s very hard to say which mounting standard each of them use. It’s common for dropper lever manufacturers to make the same lever with different mounting styles to give their customers the best chance of mounting it directly to their brakes. That means I can’t say that all Wolf Tooth dropper levers use one mounting style, because they manufacture their ReMote Pro in ~10 different variants! It’s going to be up to you to figure out exactly what kind of mounting style your dropper lever uses, and you may need to reach out directly to the manufacturer if you’re having trouble getting a positive ID. If you send us a picture of your dropper lever’s mounting interface, then it’s more than likely we can help get you sorted. 

Last but certainly not least, it’s time to pick out the right adapters for your TRP brakes. TRP’s adapter catalog is pretty large, but it’s very straightforward to get the right adapters if you’ve followed all the steps until now. Each adapter comes in a “right” and a “left” version, so make sure that you’re getting not only the correct adapter, but the correct orientation for your dropper and your shifter. Especially if your dropper and shifter have different mounting interfaces! 

Check out the spreadsheet to make sure you’ve got the perfect adapter for your setup!