tomato coupe

Yeah, it's best to just ignore the whole post rather than go through the falsehoods one-by-one.

Dave Mayer

To the OP: beware of advice given by bike industry marketers and sales people. And bike industry apologists who trying to rationalize their most recent misguided purchase. But deep down they know that their new fat-tire disc equipped bike is a sluggish pig compared to the 16-pound carbon rocket they'd bought in 2013.

The bike industry has a planned obsolescence cycle to create consumer inventory churn, and the constant need to create the NEXT GREAT THING. Chronology:

• In 1971 everyone had to be on a 10-speed (road racing bike) despite the inappropriate awkward riding position for most riders
• In 1979 you had to be on a touring bike
• In 1986 everyone had to be on a mountain bike - for all riding, on-road, off road, whatever.
• In 1990 everyone had to be on a full suspension mountain bike. Yes, a 40-pound rig with 3" knobbies for putzing around paved roads the 'hood
• In 1996 everyone had to be on a fixie
• In 2001 everyone had to be on a road bike again, well, because Lance was so great
• 2015 Discs
• 2016 fat tires
• Next: how about dropper posts and suspension forks for road bikes?
• Whatever

himespau 

Do you have other bikes? Do they all have rim brakes? Is having interchangeable wheels a thing you would value? I have a stable of bikes that all have rim brakes, and I just bought some carbon tubeless-read rims from Light Bicycle because that's what all my bikes are and I'm happy with that. If I was starting without any bikes today AND I didn't vastly prefer the looks of C&V bikes (lugs and chrome for the win), I'd probably go disk because it has the most current options. I do value however keeping everything interchangeable (and don't have the budget to buy another new frame - especially when I have a couple more in the build queue than my wife would be happy to know about.).

tomato coupe

Yeah, whatever.

PeteHski

Beware of advice given by Dave Mayer.

He clearly has some issues going on here. He posts this kind of bs on a regular basis. Don’t be fooled by it. “Bike industry apologists’ FFS!

bikemig 

That is a very good piece. I love this line from the piece:

"As it turns out, paper doesn't refuse ink, keyboards don't refuse fingers, and the internet doesn't refuse opinions of those who have vested interests. Its up to those who have decades of experience building and servicing bicycles to bring the facts to the surface (facts are stubborn things)."

Yeah I trust people with long experience over the marketing people.

ussprinceton

I have both. Disc on my MTBs. Rim on my Road bikes

DangerousDanR

Sorry to say it all you disk brake haters, but going with rim brakes means either going with Campagnolo or going with a discontinued group set or a lower end group set. And while I have a rim brake bike with carbon wheels, I will not ride it in the rain. Absolutely no way. So that means alloy wheels. I got caught at work by a heavy rain storm on my disk brake road bike. No big deal. Ride home as fast as I can. I have brakes that work.

Now, where are you going to get a 65mm deep wheel set made out of aluminum alloy? And what will that weigh? Are you going to tell me that disk brakes plus my Winspace D67 wheels are less aerodynamic than any 35mm aluminum wheel with rim brakes? And lighter? And more reliable?

Time marches on. The R&D money is being spent on disk brakes. My Campagnolo disk brakes don't rub on the disk, they work in the rain with deep carbon wheels.

beng1

I think coaster hub is superior to rim or disc brakes, and I have 1000 miles testing on this build so far this year to back that up.

Dave Mayer

Excellent article!

Jeez, a lot of opinions in this thread come right out of the July 2023 editorial of BUYcyclng magazine. Adage of the bike publications: lick the hand that feeds you.

Forgot to mention one key thing: maintenance! What happens when your weekend warrior wants to change their stem on a 2023 high-end road bike? On the lighter, faster 2013 version, this takes 10 minutes with a 5mm hex key.

On the 2023 bike, which costs double that of the 2013 bike in Real dollars, be prepared for hours of fishing, bleeding, and cursing, which involves removing the crankset and the entire front end of the bike. So your weekend warrior takes it to the shop, has to wait a week, and gets slapped with a $350 bill to gain 10mm of stem rise.

tomato coupe

That article was written more than 10 years ago, so it's not a useful review of modern road bike disc brakes.

79pmooney

The fix gear of my avatar photo has two "cockpits" - bars, stem, and full brakes; calipers and all. (A deep drop and wide "climbing" setup. V-brake road levers for their huge hoods. Shimano dual pivots giving plenty of power but not so much that braking on a rough surface hard! to keep those pedals off the pavement when I see the mountain corner I"m not making. The other - standard bend and narrower bars, regular levers and some beautiful (and pretty darn good) sidepulls for flat ground rides. Better upwind.

I love that swapping cockpits takes me 5 minutes. Nothing requires skill or close attention. (Well, it's a quill stem and if I rush that I go nuts with the cockeyed handlebars.) I can do the swap and the only check I do is to squeeze the levers and adjust the barrels if needed.

10 mm of stem rise? 5 minutes out on the road and that includes fishing for the hex key.

Edit: typo

Camilo

Rim brakes work very well. Disc brakes - while really best in some situations - are rarely needed by the vast majority of road bike riders. But they've become standard like it or no.

DangerousDanR

A low performance brake that only slows down the rear wheel is superior? We have a very different view of what superior means.

mstateglfr 

Camilo

What a horribly written article, plus, 2012?

SoSmellyAir

Seat post is mounted backwards (to reverse the setback) and saddle is all the way forward; is the bike too small for the rider?

PeteHski

I get it that you hate new bike tech and think we are all fools for buying it. But do you have any personal experience of the tech that you are so keen to ridicule, along with those who actually use it?

daviddavieboy

Lots of bickering and character assassination in this post makes the posters sound like a bunch of children but they are just being passionate (hopefully).

For brakes QUALITY hydraulic discs are the absolute best followed by QUALITY rim brakes. Being said Mechanical discs are as good as rim brakes BUT in the 15 years having them I would not by again. I found them annoyingly noisy, not great at stopping in HEAVY rain, even in mildly wet conditions they needed to be applied to "burn off" the water before they grabbed well, and needed adjusting every week. - none of which have I encountered with hydro brakes OR my rim brakes for that matter. FWIW I am a new convert to hydro disc brakes (1 year on a Trek 920) and have worked on rim brake bikes for 45 years as well as CX racing on rim brakes with 60mm carbon wheels. - they are all good if set up properly

My experience with electronic group sets is very limited but since they came out I have seen many fail on local group rides (one just from a pot hole ) - buy new if just for the warranty.

If I were to build a NEW bike it would be hydraulic disc for sure and NEW electronic shifting possibly. Maybe the new SRAM Rival AXS 1x, electronic and hydraulic disc for ~ $1000

GhostRider62

Is this post a joke or are you an old bike mechanic who is stuck in the 80's? There is almost nothing correct in your post.

shelbyfv

Are you planning to buy your high end frame new or are you looking at used? Do you have a frame material preference?

Carbonfiberboy 

IMO the main thing is frame performance. Frame performance varies more than any difference in component performance and the frame matters every instant you are on the bike. So head in that direction and use components which work well with that frame. The only big difference between disc and rim brakes is in rim wear. If you only ride in the dry, that's not a factor either. If your local roads have bad chipseal, wide tires will make a big difference. otherwise not so much. For ease of maintenance and installation, hard to beat rim brakes. But frame choice is really the determinant. Carbon of course.

Redbullet

The latest trend on the market – integrated handlebar – changed that. If you want to raise the stem or change its length, you will also need to pay for a new fork or a new integrated handlebar. But it is likely that the producer might refuse to sell those to you and ask you to send the bike to his premises (many times in another country) for the change. So, you might end up with the cheapest solution: not changing anything.

Redbullet

“This guy’s” statements (David Mayer) are valid. And even if he would be wrong (which is not the case), I think that trying to punish somebody on a forum for sharing his (her) experience is not reasonable.

With regards to the brakes: after riding both types on road bikes, I think that the disc brakes have advantages in special conditions such as: very long and hard descents with carbon rims, riding in heavy rain and / or mud conditions. On the other hand, rim brakes are cheaper, lighter and much easier to set up and maintain (especially on aluminum rims). Braking power in normal conditions is pretty much the same. Of course, we talk about good rim brakes, e.g.: SRAM Force. Since I always avoid riding in special (extreme) conditions, I can’t really benefit from the advantages of disk brakes, so I only bear their disadvantages.

I think that market(ing) sometimes pushes us to forget objectivity and to jump to justify our purchases or to follow the trends that are imposed.

tomato coupe

How is he being punished?

And, yes, most of his statements are wrong. The following statement is laughable.