Which bleed kit fits Shimano road brakes and SRAM Maven Bronze? A compatibility guide

The bleed kit that bled your XT brakes last winter may not fit the next bike that rolls into the stand. Two things trip people up more than any others: the funnel thread on Shimano road levers, which comes in two sizes, and the bleed block on SRAM's Maven caliper, which is thicker than the Code block most kits ship with. Neither is a big difference in absolute terms. Both are big enough to leave a kit on the bench refusing to seal at the lever or seat against the caliper.

This guide is the compatibility lookup we wish we had on the bench. We will walk through what to check on each system, which Bleedkit.com kits in our catalog fit each one, and where Magura, Tektro, and Formula land on the map. The cheat sheet at the bottom is the table to bookmark.

Match the kit on two axes: fluid first, fitting second

A bleed kit has to match your brake twice over. The first match is the fluid, and it is the one that bites hardest if you get it wrong: mineral oil and DOT use different seal chemistry, and crossing them swells and ruins the seals. The second match is the hardware, the funnel or syringe fitting at the lever and the block at the caliper, which is where the Shimano thread and the SRAM block come in.

A single all-purpose kit from a few years ago tends to fall down on one axis or the other once you are servicing both current Shimano road and current SRAM Maven on the same bench. The fix is system-specific kit selection, which is the way Bleedkit.com has always built kits. The Workshop Gold Mineral Oil Master Bleed Kit carries the dropbar adapter and the blocks for the Shimano mineral-oil family; the SRAM side gets its own kit family because the fluid is different.

Shimano: the M5 vs M7 funnel thread

Shimano hydraulic brakes all run the same fluid, Shimano mineral oil, the familiar yellow bottle. The catch is at the lever, where the bleed funnel threads onto the bleed port. Shimano levers use one of two funnel-thread sizes, M5 or M7, depending on the lever, so the funnel that threads into one bleed port will not thread into the other.

Flat-bar mountain levers, from XTR and XT down through SLX and Deore, take the M5 funnel. On the road side it is worth a moment to confirm, because Shimano's drop-bar levers span both threads depending on the generation. The practical rule on the bench is simple: confirm the funnel thread the specific lever takes before you thread anything, rather than assuming the kit in the drawer fits.

For the kit itself, the Premium Shimano Bleed Kit covers the flat-bar Shimano hydraulic brakes, and the Premium Road Shimano Bleed Kit adds the dropbar adapter for the road levers. A next-generation Dura-Ace groupset is expected to be announced in 2026, but it is not shipping yet; until a new lever is actually out and its bleed fitting is confirmed in hand, the sound move is to buy for the lever on the bike rather than for a spec sheet. The fluid does not change either way: Shimano mineral oil, the same as before.

SRAM: Maven and the 5.0 mm Bleeding Edge block

SRAM's Maven launched in early 2024 as a heavy-duty four-piston platform aimed at enduro and downhill, with Maven Bronze as the volume-tier offering. Two things matter for bleed-kit fitment, and the first is the one that can wreck a brake: Maven is SRAM's first high-end mountain brake to run mineral oil instead of DOT 5.1. SRAM co-developed Maxima Mineral Brake Oil specifically for Maven's seal compounds, and SRAM's own literature is explicit that using anything other than Maxima Mineral Brake Oil voids the warranty. The other change is at the caliper, where the Bleeding Edge port seats against a thicker 5.0 mm bleed block where the prior Code generation used a 4.0 mm block. The Bleeding Edge fitting itself looks the same.

The mineral-oil call is a real break with the older Code generation. SRAM made the same move on the budget-tier DB8 back in 2022; Maven brings it to the high-end mountain market. The rest of the SRAM hydraulic family, Code, Level, Guide, G2, and the Force and Red AXS road brakes, still runs DOT 5.1.

The Ultimate SRAM Bleed Kit covers SRAM's hydraulic family at the hardware level: the Edge assembly fits the Bleeding Edge port on Maven, Code, Avid Elixir, Juicy, and older Formula calipers alike, and the kit ships both block thicknesses, 4.0 mm for older Code and Avid, 5.0 mm for Maven. The fluid call is on the mechanic: Maven and DB8 take mineral oil, everything else SRAM takes DOT 5.1. The habit that saves the most grief when servicing both fluids on the same SRAM kit is the syringe contamination boundary. A syringe that has touched DOT cannot then touch a Maven, because the residual DOT attacks the mineral-oil seal stack, and the reverse holds too. Designate one kit per fluid family, or replace the syringes between fluid jobs. The SRAM Workshop DOT Bleed Kit is the volume option for shops with a DOT-only SRAM rotation: Code, Level, Guide, G2, Force and Red AXS, plus Avid Elixir and Juicy legacy.

Magura, Tektro, and other mineral systems

Magura's MT family runs on Royal Blood, Magura's own mineral-oil formulation. The lever uses a Luer-slip funnel rather than a threaded brass funnel, so it takes a kit built to the Magura interface rather than a Shimano one. The Premium Gold Magura MT Bleed Kit is built for it, with the Royal Blood fluid included at 100 ml.

Tektro and TRP run on mineral oil as well, and share enough fitting geometry with Shimano flat-bar levers that one kit can cover both with the right adapter set. The Premium Gold TRP/Tektro Bleed Kit carries the brass adapter for Tektro and TRP alongside the flat-bar Shimano blocks, so a workshop running a Tektro-equipped fleet next to Shimano can stay on one kit family. It does not cover Shimano drop-bar brakes; those need the Premium Road or Workshop Master kits with the dropbar adapter.

Formula Cura is the outlier: it uses a non-standard fitting that the Ultimate SRAM kit does not cover, so Cura service needs the Formula-specific kit, which sits outside the current Bleedkit.com catalog.

Compatibility cheat sheet

Built in Ljubljana, since 2011

Bleedkit.com is distributed by Unior USA's parent organization Euro Toolworks. The brand was founded in 2011 in Ljubljana, Slovenia, out of shop-bench frustration with one-size-fits-most bleed kits. Every kit in the catalog is built for a specific brake-system family rather than a lowest-common-denominator pattern, which is why a Shimano kit and a SRAM kit live as separate SKUs instead of one universal box.

Unior has been forging hand tools in Zreče since 1919, and is the official technical partner of multiple World Tour and downhill teams. The Bleedkit.com arrangement extends that workshop-tool philosophy onto the hydraulic-fluid side of the bench, where contamination chemistry rules and the right kit for the right system is the only setup that holds up over a season.

Pro tip from our mechanics

If you service a mixed fleet, the single move that saves the most rework is sorting the kit drawer by fluid first and by lever fitting second. One drawer for mineral oil (Shimano, Magura, Tektro, SRAM Maven, SRAM DB8), one drawer for DOT (SRAM Code, Level, Guide, G2, Force and Red AXS, Avid Elixir and Juicy, older Formula), and a wipe-down with a clean rag between every job. The drawer split is the contamination boundary that matters most. Inside the mineral-oil drawer, the funnel thread is what tells you which Shimano kit to reach for once you have identified the lever on the bike in the stand.

See all bleed kits at Unior USA → /collections/bleed-kits