I love rim brakes but I know for a fact if you're riding rim brakes down a mountain in the rain with 90 pounds then obviously you'll have to start braking much sooner than on discs. I mean let's not get carried away with the defense of them here lol

It depends on your riding goals...If you plan on riding thorough a lot of very hilly terrain, rain, snow, slush and grit, wet gravel roads, then disk brakes will save your rims from wearing out. If your riding is mostly on clean roads in nice weather with maybe an occasional rain, then get rim brakes... I do like BB7s because of simplicity and most bike shops stock pads for them...Getting brake pads for hydraulic brakes can be a problem because there are just too many different models out there and most bike shops don't stock every type of disc brake pad on the market. Sometimes you have to order online of through your LBS....Pads for rim brakes are available everywhere and a lot cheaper then disk brake pads...So my vote is for rim brakes or BB7s and I would avoid hydraulic brakes.

The type of brakes don't come into play when I look at buying a new bike. Dual pivot rim brakes work very well and from what I hear, disc brakes work very well. I guess if I had the choice, I would go with rim brakes because it is easier for me to work on them. I don't have disc brakes, hydraulic or mechanical on any of my bikes.

Just as an experiment the other day, I was going down a short (maybe 500m section of 17% or so road) I decided to see what would happen if I used my front TRP 180mm disc exclusively to slow down. Bike is Surly Troll, pretty heavy, maybe 18kg, I'm 90kg. No panniers, left them at the bottom of the hill. Pads were semi metallic Koolstops, calipers TRP Spykes operated by Jagwire Pro Cables and Avid Black Ops levers. Road was steep enough that braking produced a ripping noise from the Extraterrestrials. By the time I hit the car park I had virtually no front brake at all, you could squeeze the lever as hard as you like and nothing much happened, I couldn't feel any cable stretch. Brake disc was dark blue, so I didn't stop in the carpark, just did circles to let the disc cool and not glaze the pads.. So yeah, discs can fade, not something that I've ever had with rim brakes, and I've tried to cook them too.It surprised me actually I would have thought the combo I was using was as about a robust a disc set up as you could get and I wasn't expecting it to fade. Took a while to get full braking power bake after that, I had to re-bed the pads in

Definitely yay if you're in the market for a new bike. At this point, they are the future.

My wife and I both have lower end treks ($600.00) newby's in the world of adult cycling (3 years) FWIW her bike has rim squezzing brakes and I have a mechanical disc. Her bike brakes better than mine. They are both adequate for our type of riding but next bike will be squeezers for me.

Riding brakes for a quarter of a mile is not a commonly experienced scenario. Bicycle disc brakes can be repeatedly modulated with minimal to no expected change in feel. Rubber pads for rim braking will dramatically change the demand to the amount of lever action required to maintain/change the stopping ability, that is if the blocks of rubber have not disintegrated from being smoked out when they've been exposed to conditions involving an excessive stopping distance.

I have rim brakes on my road bike. Mechanical disc on the gravel bike. And I have hydraulic disc on my mountain bike. I love all three.

+1 :thumb:

...but that doesn't really apply here, as the OP is looking at a bike with either rim brakes or Shimano BR-305 mechanical discs. In that context, I'd go with the rim brakes. The cost to upgrade the mechs to hydraulic would be more than the cost of the entire bike.

Much as I prefer discs, in this instance, rim brakes all the way.

Thanks everyone. Good read here.

I'm leaning hard to the right in going with Rim Brakes. I'm familiar with them and it seems they will be efficient for my type of dry road/trail bicycling.

Sigh, I've never, ever, had a brake block disintegrate on me or even look like it's come close to melting and I've ridden heavily loaded down some pretty big mountains requiring some heavy braking. The swept area of rim brakes is simply too large for that to happen and the standard for rim brakes states they have to be able to descend 7900ft in 30 minutes on a 20% slope without melting.
Yeah, it wasn't an average scenario,I was in, riding down a very steep walking path where I had to keep the speed under control because of pedestrians. But it was more I wasn't expecting for them to fade at all, since they are big brakes and I wasn't loaded. I have had discs fade in similar circumstances when touring though, coming down a steep sealed road with gravel patches where you simply couldn't build up any speed by pulsing them, because gaining any speed was too risky. In that case I had to stop when I started to feel them fade and let them cool down. This partly why I decided to stress test my new larger brakes, to see if I'd have the same problem again.
Point is disc brakes aren't bullet proof and need just as much care as rim brakes do, in terms of braking technique, just in a different way. You need to be careful of rim brakes in the rain and take into account their initial bite will be low until excess water is cleared off the rim, especially if you are using low quality pads. Disc brakes you need to be aware of the heat dissipation by the discs and in certain circumstances such as long loaded or steep descents use pulsed braking to allow the discs to cool.

Big yay for disc brakes from me, after about 4000 miles on new bike with them. Allows wider tires on road frame, less work taking wheels off, easier routine maintenance, better stopping on wet roads. On my touring bike (Trek 520), at my weight (230 lbs), stopping on a down hill was always an adventure, even unloaded.

There are a few routes I ride routinely that have turns near the bottom of hills - I can now actually brake with one arm and signal the turn with the other, while on the rim brakes that was not really an option.

Since I generally avoid riding in the rain, and since those times where they give me advantage over my other bikes with rim brakes are probably less than 1% of the time, I would not call them "must have" by any means - but very little of what we spend on bikes is "must have" anyway or we would all be riding the first bike we bought.

On my Domane SL6 disc, the weight penalty was 1 lb - being able to use my preferred 32 mm tires was worth that alone. At less than .5% of my body weight, I can counteract the added weight by having two fewer beers per month...

https://cimg9.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...bc5b8531f5.jpg
I have a Colnago World Cup CX with discs. I have a Masi and a Guru road bikes with traditional brakes. Do you need disc brakes? I don't. Are discs better? Absolutely. If I was building or buying a road bike, would I go with discs. Yes. One man's opinion.

if you performed this "experiment" under like conditions, one bike equipped with disc brakes and one bike equipped with rim brakes, I think you are insinuating that the rim brake bike would perform better? don't let your prejudices cloud your next statement.

Poor adjustment, and easily remedied, most likely.

Yes. Loosen 2 caliper bolts then squeeze the brake handle while tightening them up. Problem solved.

I had hydraulic disc brakes on my hybrid, loved them at first, then hated them! Constant rubbing and sqeaking and adjusting. Bought a road bike with rim brakes prefer the rim brakes, haven't got the regulation of the discs but for me they are easier to maintain.

Just my opinion.

Disc brakes allow greater clearance for fatter tires. I bought a new bike recently and went for the disc brakes because I wanted 32 mm tires. They work well, though I never had any problems with rim brakes. Rim brakes are easy to work on. I'm not so sure about disc brakes, especially those that are hydraulic.

easy for you maybe. I assembled about 200 bikes with disc brakes a couple of years ago. It was almost never as simple as that to get them not rubbing. They can work great but as a year round commuter i will stick with what works well for me. Dual pivots and cantis have stopped me for years in all kinds of weather and all kinds of terrain.

I really like disc brakes, but given the bikes the OP is considering and the riding conditions he's outlined I'd definitely go for rim brakes and save some money (and weight). It's a no-brainer to me.

Yeah, I personally find discs are more finicky than some are letting on. That said, I really do want them on any bike that I'm riding in wet conditions and I like their stopping power on my touring bike.

Well...I have 4 bikes all with disc brakes. Any rubbing issues I have had have been remedied by the methond mentioned above. Easy Peasy.

If it's a cable actuated disc brake there is even more adjustment since those have a pad adjustment screw.

+1. The way some people talk you'd expect to have heard about countless dead and crippled touring cyclists who were, over decades, unable to stop over because they were using rim brakes. Or did I miss the news stories about all that?

not much of an addict anymore, eh?

IME, the finnicky vary wildly based on quality. Never had a dragging or setup issue on my TRP Spyre or Shimano hydros, when the wife bought her bike with cheap Tektro cables, I suddenly understood the complaints.

If you're constantly having to adjust hydraulic brakes, you've probably done something wrong on the setup or something is wrong with the brakes themselves. All my MTBs have hydros and they take way more of a beating than my more road/utility oriented bikes ever will, and I've yet to have any problems despite running the brakes a whole hell of a lot harder on em.

"Better" is a matter of perspective. I'd prefer to think in a way of advantages vs disadvantages.