Atlas Shrugged

We also missed Rod Brakes, produced in the millions and the brake which militaries relied on for two world wars.

wheelreason

No excitement from my sporting goods, I don't like surprises, I just want stuff to work, and I hate changing equipment, still playing tennis with my Wilson Pro Staffs, and dive with my 1980s regulator. The rest of life, oh, I could write several books...

Chuck M 

I've long had a favorite chair, restaurant, beer, radio station and several other favorites. But I was thinking this morning that I had reached another level of old age when I pondered about what pair of underwear was my favorite. Then when I got to work, someone was looking at the pictures of my bikes on my monitors and asked which was my favorite. That was an easy question, my favorite is the one I'm riding. I guess that means by default my favorite brake is on the bike I'm riding.

indyfabz

My favorite break is lunch, and I do have a favorite pair of underwear.

Arrowana

Dual-pivot calipers are my favorite to work on, as they are usually the easiest to set-up perfectly. For actually using them, my favorite is any brake that can be paired with a high-end vintage short-pull lever.

SoSmellyAir

Air brake. I zoom up behind someone, and, at the right moment, sit almost straight up so my massive tummy acts as an air brake, while my stupidly annoying freehub makes the whirring buzzzz sound, all to signal my approach and anticipated overtaking.

SoCaled 

_ForceD_

I like coffee breaks, lunch breaks, break and bakes, and breakneck speed. And Kit Kat Bars. Oh wait. Wrong break. Now…can we move on to more important things like favorite length of spokes.

Eric F 

Hydraulic disc brakes are my #1 choice. That said, my primary road bike has rim brakes, and I have a singlespeed MTB with V-brakes. Both stop well enough.

Chuck M 

My granddaughter ranks her favorites. She has a third favorite best friend and a fifth favorite color. Her bike has a coaster brake on the rear and a rim brake on the front. I'll ask her which she prefers.

GamblerGORD53

Most bikes didn't have front brakes till the late 1960s, SS anyway. I didn't have one until 1974. LOL
ROD brakes are or ever were brakes?? LOL hahahahahahahahaha


I'm not going anywhere without my PERFECT SA drum brakes now.
My tour bike before the Rohloff14 had both drum hubs. Maiden ride I went 45.5 mph. >>>

SpeedyBlueBiker

Hydraulic brakes work best for me on both road and mtn bikes. I also like the rim brakes that I have on some of my road bikes.

Atlas Shrugged

I was first to advocate for the drum brake in post #4 so some respect is due.

But don’t knock the respectable rod brake. The brake of choice from the adoption of the safety bike through to the end of WW2 in Europe. Still available to this day in China a billion or so produced who are we to judge.

GamblerGORD53

I HAD one of those bikes bought brand new in 2009 in Chengdu for my 3 week stay. Looked like your pic, at least the fenders were nice.
I did ride it around 300+ miles all over. Both rims were warped. I had to chose between two bikes with the front or rear worse. LOL. I picked the green one. So the brakes wiggled while the wheels wiggled to a SLOW stop. Fat chance on a hill.
I have a couple pics but a bag hides the front brake. At best you could say they scrape the rust off where the pads rub.
Anyway, they quit making them about that year. You won't see any of them on the streets now, actually wasn't many in 2015 when I had my own tour bike. This new bike was actually far worse than the ones made 20 years before this. I had one there in 2006.
Their worst problem was having everything looped around the axle, so impossible to keep the nut tight.
Had the same problem with bikes in Vietnam. It also had a warped tire. $80 or $90 for the whole bike.
I DID take my tools and used them all. LOL.
=========
Edit sorry, it was the Vietnam bike that had the band brake rear.

One Wheel

I've never ridden cable-actuated disk brakes that I liked, and never ridden hydraulic disk brakes that I didn't like (very little experience with road disk, to be fair). Rim brakes are a mixed bag, in my experience.

Packrat1947

Just plain everyday rim brakes work fine. No need to over-think and complicate matters. This would be for children.

wolfchild

I've been using Avid BB7s on two of my bikes for a very ling time. What's not to like ?

One Wheel

You can upgrade just about anything, but my MTB came with the cheapest Shimano hydraulic brakes available and I still prefer the feel to any mechanical disk brakes I've ever used.

veganbikes

Most decent brakes can be good. I really love my eeBrakes on my more modern road bike and my fixed gear but I have now 4 sets of Magura MT brakes on various bikes and those are excellent and I also love my Shimano XT 4 pot disc brakes as well. The Paul MotoLites I had (a linear pull brake) were also quite nice but honestly the bike wasn't right for me so I sold it and some how ended up with the frame again and might try and again with a different configuration. I also have a set of Deore V-Brakes (also linear pull for the generic name) and those are fine.

Really it comes down to quality parts that are actually doing the stopping. The calipers and levers don't really always make the real difference it is the pads and shoes for rim brakes and the pads and rotors for disc brakes that make the big difference at the caliper and cables and housing for mechanical brakes and hose and fluid for hydraulic brakes (though not so much fluid type assuming you are using the correct fluid for your brakes but the correct amount and proper bleed). If those parts are good generally your braking will improve significantly however there are of course exceptions as some calipers and levers are just so poorly made that even with good parts it won't work very well. With braking you generally want a nice stiff system and I have seen plenty of calipers that could be bent by a little baby.

The only brakes I probably have little interest in running are spoon brakes, rod brakes, or roller brakes (nothing against roller brakes they work well and seem to be pretty low maintenance). I would run a coaster brake if I could get Moné Bad Ass Coasters with all the upgrades but it would just be for a silly fun bike I would build because I had most of the bikes I really truly wanted and had plenty of money to spare.

LesterOfPuppets

I'm a big fan of cable actuated brakes myself. I'm even OK with the slightly less expensive BB5s. They take maybe a couple more minutes per 100 miles to adjust compared to BB7s but no biggie.

If I ever got brakes with juice in 'em I'd probably go with the hybrid style, where all the juice is down by the caliper, as opposed to having juice up by the handlebar, and a big hose full o' juice.

Steel Charlie

Anything works for me. I don't use the brakes much. Never wore out a set of pads. The ano is still on the brake surface of wheels that I built 40years ago. Now I have Shimano double pivots on everything cos they're hella easy to set up and never need adjusting.
JMO of course

jadmt

currently have a a disc bike, a canti bike and a V brake bike...order of like....disc, v, canti......I for the life of me can not get the canti's to feel good no matter what and have tried two different sets ie tektro and diacomp. 3 different bike shops canti (see what I did there )either.....

t2p

actually have a couple of bikes with canti’s that brake / feel very good

including one bike with low / medium level STX cantilever brakes (pictured above)

ofajen

I’ve considered this recently. I’ve mostly ridden single speed for the last four years and don’t really foresee a change, so it would be fun to ditch the cables and levers and just use a coaster brake. My rear U-brake lives under a constant assault of trail dust, mud and water and a hub brake would avoid that mess. I suppose a drum brake hub would be another option.

Otto

Atlas Shrugged

Absolutely best post of the tens of thousands of posts on this forum discussing brakes.

Thanks