tomato coupe

I think the issue is that the rubber seals that provide the retracting force have very limited range. Increasing the gap is possible, but it requires increasing the overall size of the calipers.

Seattle Forrest

I read that as a bike vacation in your future.

79pmooney

So you are suggesting designing disc brake systems using higher levels of engineering? Like using calculus to arrive at the time and velocity of a falling apple? Not just approximating using a good average speed? This requires engineers with more education, That runs counter to "get the product out faster, cheaper and at higher profit level".

I recall seeing that circuitry in engineering fluids. Not my specialty at all but pretty interesting that it could be done. Now I saw that in 1974. So it may be rocket science (we learned that also) but hardly anything new.

Ben

Seattle Forrest

Our "local" climbs (local takes on a different meaning when your state is 400 miles across) are Washington Pass with 3,500 feet over 17 miles and dramatically beautiful scenery, and Hurricane Ridge with 5,200 feet over 17 miles and dramatically beautiful scenery. If you can fit 28s, there are a lot of dirt roads with great climbs and descents too. Harts Pass is a mile above the valley floor, takes 12 miles to rise up, and the climate is different at the top and bottom.

noodle soup

Mt Lemmon has saguaro cactus at the base, and a ski area at the top.

63rickert

Disc brakes have been on market 50 years. Someone else mentioned 15. Five-zero. Half of a century. Lots and lots and lots of work has gone into making them saleable. One thing everyone was always sure of was if you could get them to work they would be easy to sell. Well, now they work.

In meantime rim brakes have had no development whatsoever. None. Nada. Zip. Best brake design out there - and still in production from multiple shops - is 70 years old. For that neglect they deserve to lose out. Most wheel builds are still mediocre and rim brakes don't work if the wheel isn't straight. Calipers are mostly badly set up. Cable runs are mostly badly set up. As Psimet keeps telling us riders don't come in to have their rim brakes worked on. If it halfway works they leave it alone. Half good is acceptable. Most have never experienced rim brakes that work as well as they can work. So yeah, perfect discs are better than mediocre rim brakes.

After deciding the disc on the new bike solves all problems no one is going to pay any attention to what really matters. Traction has always been the limit on ability to stop a bike. Rim or disc affects brake feel, it doesn't affect traction at all. Riders don't know and don't care what they can do themselves to create opportunity for traction. While dizzy with the success of discs no one bothers to learn how to ride. A rider with a clue is always going to stop faster and safer than a clueless rider, regardless of equipment.

OldChipper

I care one heck of a LOT as I suspect does anyone who:

a) does all their own bike maintenance and has more than one bike
b) owns a lot of wheelsets and uses them interchangeably on their n+1 bikes
c) likes to spend more time riding than running their bike back and forth to the bike shop
d) cares about weight and aero-dynmaics
e) doesn’t want to faff about getting adapters for all sorts of stuff original designed for rim brake bikes (racks, trainers, work stands, etc.)
f) travels frequently with their bike
g) realizes that for the conditions in which 95+% of riders ride, rim brakes work perfectly fine and have for decades.
h) has ever wanted to adjust lever travel before the pads engage or needs to adjust pad clearance on the road

Have I missed anything guys?

tomato coupe

Wow, both sides are arguing that the people in the bike business are incompetent.

OldChipper

Agree whole-heartedly with the last point. That said, rim brakes HAVE evolved and improved. Today’s rim bakes are 1000% better than those of 20-30 years ago and even noticeably better than in the 2000’s. There are also direct-mount rim brakes which are a notable improvement. I’d submit that precisely BECAUSE mediocre rim brakes work just fine is why THEY should prevail. Improperly bled hydraulic discs, ones that get a bubble in the line (come on, how many of us have more than one bike hung upside down in the garage! ), ones where you’ve touched the lever with the wheel out (horrors!), ones that you didn’t cover with a plastic bag when you cleaned or lubed your bike, or one with even a slightly tweaked rotor, etc. etc. DON’T.

eduskator

I could agree with you, but then we'd both be wrong... Disc brakes are almost free of maintenance and are a lot more efficient. Not sure who you are trying to convince here, but you'll need bettah arguments.

Cbare68

8 pages on rim vs disc... I am sure glad the internet wasn’t around when we went from non-indexed to indexed shifters...

myisland

I'm waiting for a braking system that prevents riders from going over the handlebars.

tomato coupe

It's really a spectacular climb. I rode it 3 weeks ago -- temperature was in the 60s at the base, but mid 30s at the top. The clouds rolled in just as I topped out, and I frrrrrroooooze on the descent.

For the locals: What's the story behind the section of "cobbles" at one of the tourist turnouts? Mini speed bumps?

eduskator

Lots of pushback would have been noted. Human nature: People are always reluctant to changes.

eduskator

The Flintstones found the solution back in 1960. Good old feet braking system.

Seattle Forrest

It's a really cool experience, isn't it? To see that kind of transformation, and to cover the distance on your own power.

Russ Roth

King themselves say that it is unnecessary to pull out the bearings in order to clean them. The only real exception is the roller bearings which that tool is available separately anyways. Isn't a matter of wrong tools, more like, I need to change the oil in my car, let's pull the oil pan to do it. I bought the tools through their EP program and found the price palatable as I knew the day would come when I'd move on from being a tech for a living. With 6 sets of hubs in the house between the wife and I and plans to pick up some used sets for the kids' race bikes I'm not worried about the cost.

Dual pivot are 70 years old and mediocre? Cause the first set of Shimano 600 were night and day better than any brake I'd ever experienced before their arrival and modern ultegra are a good argument for rim brakes being good enough for most people.

😂😂😂
No argument on that.

yukiinu

Hydraulic disc brakes/ what can go wrong will go wrong. Also, the concept destroy the "elegant symplicity" of the bicycle made up of simple frame, balanced spoke forces supporting over a hundred pounds on 2 inches of easily collapseble rim, propelled by human effort and stopped by "elegant sympicity" of pulling on the brake cable and squeezing easily replaced super low cost rubber brake pads (available everywhere in drugstores ) on the wheel rim.

Seattle Forrest

I like the elegant simplicity of using a servomotor to shift gears.

tomato coupe

My local drugstore stocks just as many disc brake pads as they do rim brake pads.

63rickert

Hadn't been thinking of that side when I wrote that but yes, they are. Very much so. I was thinking more of how much riders foul up their own bikes when they do their own work.

sauerwald

I look at this from an engineering perspective -
to slow the bike, you exert a force on the pavement, opposite the direction of motion. With a rim brake, that force is being transferred directly from the rim, to the tire to the pavement, and the force being applied by the rim brake to the rim is almost the same as the braking force.
With a disk brake, the force is applied to the disk, and transferred down to the hub, then up to the rim via the spokes, and finally to the tire to the pavement. Because of the lever force since the disc is smaller diameter than the rim, you have to apply about 3.5x as much force to the rim as what gets applied to the pavement. All this force is transferred laterally through the spokes, which means that you shouldn't lace a wheel for disc brakes radially, and it should have more spokes for an equivalent strength. If the UCI weight limit were not artificially high, this would make a difference on the bike weight, but it is easy to take weight from other places to add to wheels, resulting is a less safe bike.
I would put disc brakes on a commuting or touring bike, where weight is not so much of an issue, and I am going to build a bullet-proof wheel, but absent UCI weight wierdness, it makes more sense to have a light weight, radial laced wheel, with rim brakes, than a heavier wheel, laced for disc brakes.

tonymarch

I have disc brakes on my new mountain bike and absolutely love them. The control and stopping power are beyond compare.

However, where I ride and how I ride, I don't see the benefit of discs on my road bike. I live is South Jersey; it's so flat we call the wind "South Jersey hills". It's not as flat as some areas of the Midwest, but there are no major climbs that require exceptional stopping power. I almost never ride in the rain, and I don't ride carbon rims. So I don't see what I would gain by switching to discs. I've never had an issue stopping my road bike with my rim brakes; if you do, you might need some training on the proper way to brake (I teach it in my bike safety class). Again, not saying there isn't benefit for some riders, just saying they don't justify the additional complexity and weight for others. If I'm missing something, let me know.

63rickert

Dual pivot brakes are at least 90 years old. Original Shimano 600 were ordinary single pivot sidepull. If you think current Ultegra is good enough then you would be happy on most any antediluvian rim caliper were it only properly fitted.

DiabloScott

I *AM* fortunate, can't see myself living anywhere else. And yeah, come on out, everybody is welcome.