Originally Posted by
speyfitter
Your answer sounds like a reluctant revisionist RG who has lost faith in the rim brake, acknowledges the superiority of disc brakes, yet is stubbornly clinging to not want to admit it “on paper” by attempting to assert through some convoluted logic that they are the same.
No. I’m not reluctant nor a revisionist. I am a retro grouch that fails to see the supposed “superiority” of disc brakes having ridden mountain bikes from the early 80s onward and never having found any of the brakes on mountain bikes to be lacking. That includes cantilever, of which I have at 3 cantilever equipped bikes in my current stable of 9 bikes. That includes one that I load up with 40 to 50 lbs of extra gear and throw it down mountains at high rates of speed.
As to the mechanism, hub mounted discs and rim brakes are
exactly the same. Rim brake calipers push brake pads into a spinning disc of metal using friction to slow and stop the bicycle…just as disc calipers push brake pads into a smaller spinning disc of metal. Any differences are in details only. The principle, however, is the same.