Originally Posted by Trevtassie

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