Originally Posted by
52telecaster
First paycheck from the bike shop...and the money is cool. For those of you unfamiliar with low to medium end bikes in a modern bike shop, let me just say, I love riding my bike home.
I have to test ride and burn in the brakes on everything I build so I kind of have a feel for the bikes, and really I just like my bikes better. I usually ride in my moto but sometimes ride the bob jackson.
Anyway my big takeaway on disc brakes is that cable actuated cheap ones are about equivalent to cheap v brakes. Different but not better. Most of the hydraulics are pretty nice but i hate what they do to a bike frame. Besides weinman centerpulls get me to and from work in the rain just fine.
That is exactly my experience I had with discs when I worked in a shop for a summer in 2005. Had to test ride everything, just like you, and was always grateful for my Ron Cooper at the end of the day. I guess things haven't come very far in 15 years in spite of all the hype! Or indeed in 45 years. The difference is that I wasn't on any forums to share my opinions back then. The management really didn't like me sharing my opinions (which at the time were pretty much only the purview of Rivendell readers), like it was some heresy that would hurt sales if any of the other staff heard it. They pretty relentlessly made fun of my Ron Cooper. It sounds like you really have found the good crowd!
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Owner & co-founder, Cycles René Hubris. Unfortunately attaching questionable braze-ons to perfectly good frames since about 2015. With style.