British expatriate Wayne Moore had been the general manager and design guru at the Taiwanese Ashima brake company. Last year he left Ashima, and he and his wife started a new brake company, The Legion. He was displaying several interesting new products at Interbike, including a two-piece and one-piece rotor and brake and shift cable housing.
I met Wayne back at the Interbike 2007 show and stumbled upon him at the KCNC booth where he was showing off his lightweight AiRotors rotors. As any self-respecting weight weenie, I was immediately intrigued with the rotors, and we've had a friendship ever since then.
The Legion Discus is one-piece rotor and made from 420 stainless steel which has a hardness of HRC 48, and this gives better braking performance and increased strength and stiffness. To alleviate pulsating issue from the cutouts on the outer braking-ring, he redesigned and squared them, and the circumference is much more rounded. For increased stiffness, the rotors spider uses a dual leg design which has a middle strut for stability purposes. They will come in 140, 160 and 180 sizes, and should weigh between 65-105 grams.
The Legion Javelin D-Drive is their two-piece floating rotor and uses the same 420 stainless steel for the outer ring and an aluminum inner spider. The Javelin has an interesting design for connecting between the two entities; the inner and outer are both CNC machined to interlock and fit like a jigsaw together, which makes for a much stiffer rotor. They're attached to each other with an aluminum pin and a star lock washer, which takes 150 kg to separate. This arrangement of using an aluminum pin in its design not only allows a true floating system, it also greatly improves heat transfer, induces no stress and helps with flatness. They will come in 140, 160 and 180 sizes, and should weigh between 85-119 grams.
The new Legion 1st Centurion brake and cable housing uses a Kevlar fiber reinforced metal-matrix construction. It uses 12 aluminum strands, and five steel strands interspersed with each other, this arrangement saves around 40% in weight, yet still retains great strength.
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