Originally Posted by
elmo449
Yeah, I'm definitely pretty careless with my dirty hands when I work on my bike, and I've contaminated discs as a result. So a lot of my noise woes are probably self-inflicted. I figure mistakes are inevitable during roadside maintenance, and I'd rather not pay a price for accidentally touching the wrong part of my bike.
Thanks, and something around 63cm would be a good fit.
I suspect that most people have made mistakes, but we do learn to be more careful, it's doable. When my front disc was making terrible squealing, I tried all kinds of stuff, and eventually sorted it out, and learned all the various tricks to do.
Before that, there were times things were noisy, and then just stopped on their own, so I guess I'm less worried about my disc bike, as I've slowly figured out how to deal with things--but I readily admit I was frustrated at times early on--but I do like working on bikes and figuring out things on my own, so once I got the whole centering calipers properly, changing pads, dealing with slight pad contaminations a few times (using alcohol to clean them, burning them with a propane torch, sanding them a wee bit) and even very very lightly sanding my rotor to even out accumulated "wavey" pad material that I think was the main cause for a super loud squeal---I'm somewhat more confident of being able to deal with stuff.
but ya, rim brakes work pretty good too, you still have to position pads properly, toe-in and all that, plus keeping rims and pads clean.
but whatever works.
and ya, around here, you don't see 63cm used touring bikes that much.