Okay, I’ll bite. I’ll preface this by saying that I have 9 bikes with various brake mechanisms. One bike has dual pivot road brakes. Three of my bikes have cantilever. One has disc front with a linear brake in the back. 4 have discs only. One of the cantilever brake equipped bikes gets loaded with silly weights of gear and gets ridden up and down all kinds roads in wet, dry, and “gravel”. The mullet (disc front/linear back) gets loaded with slightly less silly amounts of gear and gets ridden up and down rocky roads. That one also gets outfitted with studs in the winter and gets ridden on snowy/icy streets.
Not one of these bikes have brakes that perform vastly better than the others. The brakes stop me when I need to be stopped or slow me when I need to be slowed. I have never experienced an incidence with the brake systems I currently owned where I said to myself “I wish I had more brake!”. I haven’t experienced that problem since the bad old days of Diacomp center pulls or since I tried riding an Indian bike with rod brakes. The brakes just work.
Now on to the fun.
Originally Posted by
Koyote
There's been a lot of argument about disc brakes lately, and it feels like both sides talk past each other a bit -- maybe one side more so than the other.
After just reading yet another post with a blanket condemnation of disc brakes, I thought I would start this thread. Below are descriptions of my two disc brake bikes and the reasons
why I choose discs.
That’s just bloody marvelous…
for you. As I stated above, I have fin and disc and, honestly, can’t feel any difference. Both types work. As to the sides talking past each other, I can’t tell you the number of times that people have stared at me in open horror when they see my rim brake equipped bike
I’ve been told by all kinds of people that I’m going to die while riding those “unsafe” rim brakes. Seems that they haven’t failed me in over 40 years of riding them.
1) One of the disc brake bikes is a dedicated gravel race rig, on which I normally run tires in the 40mm-44mm wide range. Disc brakes have the following advantages, IMO:
-- They don't limit tire width
That’s not been a limit that I’ve experienced with rim brakes. I’ve used cantilever and linear brakes to 55 to 60mm wide without having troubles.
-- They stop better than rim brakes (esp since they are hydraulic discs), which is kind of useful
Yada. Yada. Yada. I have never ridden into a wall, car, tree, or any other object because my brakes weren’t sufficient. I’ve gone over the bars with rim brakes which is the ultimate measure of bicycle brake power. (It’s physics). I know how to use all of my brakes to get the maximum out of them and, more importantly, how to get the minimum out of them. Powerful brakes and slick surfaces are not a great combination. The strength of the brake is not a measure of their stopping ability since the grip is limited by the tire. I’ve kissed pavement many times with those (supposedly) weak rim brakes as well as the more powerful disc due to ice. It hurts either way.
-- They allow one-finger braking, which I've found makes it much easier to pick my line while scrubbing off speed on steep, long, rough, rocky, potholed descents. (In the last 5-6 years, I've been in two gravel races in which riders have broken their necks - literally - on such descents. So I'm kind of interested in controlling my bike.)
Well you kind of
have to use one finger. They are a bit touchy.
As for the racers who have broken their necks, is that due to them not having sufficient brakes or for other reasons? Before I believe that they were injured because of the brakes, I’d need to hear from them as to what happened.
2) The other disc brake bike is my "all road, all weather" bike which is equipped with fenders and 35mm wide tires. The advantages are:
-- Again, no issues with squeezing tires past rim brakes and additionally fitting fenders in there
-- They work better in rain and mud - which are part of the bike's use-case
Fenders have never been much of a problem for me, although I have a bike that has cantilevers because linear brakes don’t work well with very wide (2.5”) fenders. And I’ve already addressed the tire size “issue”.
As for rain and mud, never had much of a problem with rim brakes.
Advantage for both bikes:
-- No worries about wearing out rims, which is useful since these are both high-mileage bikes which are ridden in wet and dirty conditions.
The “wearing out rims” issue is way over blown. I’ve seen a lot of wheels during my 10 to 15 years of volunteering at my co-op and few of them are worn out. In my own personal wheels, the number of rims I’ve worn out on 40 bikes I’ve owned and far more than 80 wheels I’ve owned over the last 35 years of records (and an additional 11 years without records) can be counted on one hand. It happens but isn’t nearly the problem that people make it out to be. If you ride the brakes all the time, the rims will wear out faster. I can go years without even changing the pads.
Originally Posted by
Koyote
Not much, and not as important to me as my reasons for choosing discs on those bikes.
Granted. Although, depending on the application, weight can be important. My wife’s hydraulic disc brake equipped bike is significantly heavier…about 4 lbs…than her rim brake equipped bike in a very similar size. I could lose about a pound by going to mechanicals disc. That may not seem like much but 4 lbs when you weigh around 110 lbs is a significant difference. I’d need 8 pounds more to experience the same difference and likely more because my muscle mass is greater.
ALL of the good mfrs make plenty of hubs (in various drillings, straight pull vs j-bend, etc) for disc brakes. You'd have to try hard to NOT find any sort of hubs you want. And my disc wheels use the same lacing patterns as my rim brake wheels.
Mostly granted, although that depends on how much you want to spend. Shimano is so what limited on drillings. Boutique hubs have more flexibility.
I've not found that to be true of rim brakes, and I've also not found any problem in sourcing disc brake pads for two different brands.
Now you are just flat out wrong. Although the pad configuration and rubber compound can vary, the actual attachment of the pad to the calipers is pretty universal. Some pad compounds are better than others but the same holds true for disc. Koolstop
has a disc pad poster with a dizzying array of pad configurations. The poster doesn’t show all of them. Quality Bicycle Products lists 345 disc brake pads in their catalog. That’s a seriously stupid number of brake pads and different configurations. Prior to discs, you could walk into any shop and ask for pads and they would put them in your hand with a minimum of bother. Now they have to search data bases and need to know make
and model of the brake. Disc brake pads may be the
least standardized part of bicycling.
Bike #2 has discs and QRs. Can confirm that this concern is nonsense.
I bet bike 2 has lawyer lips. Lawyer lips or through axle are required for the save use of quick release and disc brakes. Granted you won’t find too many bikes made after about 1995 that don’t have lawyer lips but some people shave them off.
If any of you naysayers think my reasons for running disc brakes (on two of my five bikes) are stupid, ill-informed, whatever, let's hear it right here. I'm eager to process your logic.
You have your reasons for using disc brakes. Whatever floats your boat. It’s not stupid nor ill-informed or “whatever”.
On the other hand, don’t go thinking that those of use who don’t think that disc brakes are the answer to all problems are “stupid, ill-informed, whatever”.