WhyFi

Yeah, I've only ever had the issue twice. As is often the case, those without the experience are making it out to be a bigger issue than it is in practice.

kingston 

Thanks, WhyFi & PeteHski , Helpful responses. I'm into randonneuring so riding in the rain and the accompanying pad contamination has been very common for me. As you say, it's probably not an issue for most people.

pgjackson

You asked me when was the cycling community against disk brakes. It was when people started taking road bikes and beefing them up with disk brakes (because rim brakes often got gummed up with mud on trails) and knobby tires (caliper brakes often didn't spread far enough to be able to take off a wheel with a fat tire) for off-road racing. The road bike community was against putting those heavy brake systems on road bikes. And I think this community is a pretty solid representation of the dedicated cycling community....the kind of cyclists who pay attention to stuff like this. I'm not for or against disk brakes, I'm just surprised at how quickly the cycling community has flipped their opinions on the subject.

Branko D

The allure of hydro discs, electronic shifting and tubeless is that it just works (and works better than the old stuff, too). You air the tires, charge your gears (you're charging your Garmin anyway) and go. If something (infrequently) causes a problem, you visit the local shop or a mate who likes fiddling with their bikes.

Half the cyclists I ride with (especially triathletes, heh), prefer to just ride their bikes, not wrench on them. I've ridden with triathletes who are good, but who couldn't shift to the big ring and resigned to riding in the small ring. So I'm like "turn the barrel adjuster out a few turns" and they're like "Turn a what? ". So I don't think that this community is so representative of people who buy and ride bikes.

​​​​Personally, I can fix most bike problems and I really like my bikes with mechanical shifting and mechanical discs, but the next bike I get will have hydraulics and electronic shifting because it's really just better, at the end of the day.
​​​​​​

Sy Reene

No argument that it likely works better, but Di2 had better work better as it's close to double the cost of its mechanical counterpart.

tomato coupe

You're arguing against reality. If the road bike community had been solidly against disc brakes, no one would have bought them, and disc brake road bikes would have died out before they established a toehold in the market.

PeteHski

Or if disc brakes were crap, there would have been a huge backlash by now. Something like we are kind of seeing to a certain degree with some press-fit BBs. I just don't see that turnaround happening with disc brakes. Even TT bikes are now rapidly moving over to discs.

popeye

The next big thing will be CF rotors @$1k each. Solves all your musical brake problems. I downgraded my track car from CF pads on slotted and cross drilled rotors to ceramic pads but not for performance. Which has nothing to do with anything.

Dancing Skeleton

I've got Bontrager Speed Stop direct mount brakes on my 2019 Emonda SLR with XXX2 carbon wheels.
I've got Sram Red22 HRD disc brakes on my 2021 Domane SLR.
There is very little difference in braking performance between the two,
But in comparison to my 2011 Madone with Sram Red22 rim brakes paired with Bontrager RXL wheels (2010's),
performance of the direct mount brakes is far superior.

pgjackson

Do you feel the need to nit pick every comment? I said when they FIRST started making an appearance on road bikes in the cyclocross community, the road cycling community largely rejected them. That is factual statement. Nobody was running disk brakes on the pro circuit 10 years ago and the OEMs weren't putting them on dedicated road bikes. They existed, but were not popular in the road community. We had several long debates on this forum back then and the consensus was that they are not meant for road cycling...mostly due to weight. Since then they have taken over. That's all I'm saying. Not sure why you want to refute this.

tomato coupe

Refuting broad, false statements is not nit picking.

pgjackson

What was false?

Pizzaiolo Americano 

How many ways can we think of to start a disc vs rim brake thread? This has to be the third this week. Holy crap...It's a bike. Ride what you like. You are pretty unlikely to burst in to flames for making the wrong decision because there isn't one...

big john

For the next one we should include frame material and tube/tubeless for a trifecta of BF dead horses.

Pizzaiolo Americano 

Facts...

pgjackson

Just don't shave your legs if you ride disk brakes.



(pop smoke....disappear....)

popeye

I wonder how many lording the qualities of disks have even tried direct mount? Carbon rims with Black Prince pads direct mount work just great for me. Braking forces are transferred directly to the frame not from the end of the fork.

Broctoon

Yep. And you can have radial spokes on the front, which give your wheel lighter weight and better lateral stiffness.*


* Both attributes are only better by a tiny margin. Like how disc brakes offer tiny benefits in most situations.

tomato coupe

The upside of disc brakes is not revealed in the situations where they offer tiny benefits, it is revealed in the situations where they offer more substantial benefits.

Broctoon

Like wet or gritty environments? Fair point.

Of course, many of us simply choose not to ride when the weather gets nasty, or we have a bike for those conditions and another one for the nice days. (My rainy/winter bike = disc brakes, which are decent. My dry weather bike = excellent rim brakes. It sure is nice living in the "first world".)

noimagination

I admit I prefer the esthetics of rim brakes, but that's just vanity, or nostalgia.

I have one bike with dual/single pivot calipers.
One bike with cantilever brakes.
One with mechanical disk brakes (tandem).
All bikes have alloy rims.

They all stop my bikes, even in the wet (eventually - so far tire grip in the wet has mattered more than brake grip, but I'm fairly timid descending when it's wet). To date, I haven't seen any need to replace a perfectly good bike just to get another with disk brakes, with one caveat: I'm glad to have disks on our tandem bike. I'd descend a lot more slowly if our tandem had only rim brakes. It's not so much that the rim brakes wouldn't stop the bike, but they would take significantly longer to stop it, and I'd have to squeeze a lot harder which would make it harder to absorb bumps while braking, which could compromise my control of the bike (the road surfaces around here are not always the best).

I took a ride a couple of days ago on my canti bike, and I took a route with lots of steep descending - including a +30% slope down to a stop sign at a junction with a high speed road (stopping is not optional - very short sightlines). The cantis worked fine, but I admit I'd have appreciated having disks, my forearms would have been much less fatigued.

I'd much, MUCH rather replace disk brake pads than canti pads. Even setting up the disks the first time was pretty simple - centering is certainly easier than it is for cantis. And after that, it takes a couple of minutes to pop the old pads out and pop the new ones back in. From my limited experience, it does seem to be true that disk pads don't last as long as rim brake pads. (Edit: I've not had to buy any new tools, though I'm thinking about getting a rotor truing tool for, what, $15?)

So, I guess I don't really have a strong preference. For a single road bike, for my usage (just riding around for fun and fitness, no racing) I'd probably cheap out and get the rim brake option to save money. If I were getting a tandem, I'd get the disk brakes every time. Weight and aero are factors, but not big ones. A light bike/aero can be nice, but it isn't at the top of my list so arguments regarding weight/aero with respect to rim vs. disk brakes don't move me.

(Note: I don't know anything about hydraulic disks, nor carbon rims, nor racing.)

dkatz1

I have only been cycling for 22 years, but I wore out some wheels from braking. Metal got too thin....they were decent wheels, Mavic Kysirum elilte.

pachyderm56

We have to remember that we are not the only bicycle consumers on the earth, here in the US bike enthusiasts generally ride for fitness / health or the social aspects of group rides. We do not look at a bike as utilitarianistically as the rest of the world, that said, I think, that rim brakes will be around for a long time, each summer I pick up a steel frame from the late 70's - late 80's and build it up with period components (always friction shifters) and you know what? the bike is always fun to ride, sure something much newer would be 2 or 3 kilos lighter and thousands of dollars more but would it really be thousands of dollars more fun ? not to me

Steeler_fanatic

Disc brakes have been trouble free for me. I change the pads out about every 7000 km or so and even then I could probably go past 10000 km.

GhostRider62

I probably do not brake enough. Everything wears out, even rotors.