Disc brakes are really strongly aliased with new bikes. Personally, I like the feeling of my new bike, which happens to have disc brakes. So, I don't mind disc brakes.
Disc Brakes Took over the Cycling World. Here's Why That Was a Mistake
21–30 of 93 posts
Re: Disc Brakes Took over the Cycling World. Here's Why That Was a Mistake
#22This seems a bit extreme. My take: * Mountain bikes are better with them. I hate the low tolerances in terms of adjusting the damn things though. * I guess they're better with carbon rims on road bikes? * But the 'limiting factor' in stopping a road bike in most cases is the road/tire contact patch, not the brakes. I can lock up a road bike just fine with caliper brakes.
Carbon rims (prior to 2016 or so) were notorious for offering a poor braking experience and you ran the risk of overheating the brake surface on big descents and potentially delaminating the carbon rim. Better wheels and pads were manufactured, resulting in a much better experience when riding on higher quality wheels.
No mistake, disc brakes offer better braking power and a superior braking experience to rim brakes but the difference is nowhere as big as it used to be.
Re: Disc Brakes Took over the Cycling World. Here's Why That Was a Mistake
#23This guy speaks for himself. Rim brakes are not better for most riders most of the time. Hydraulic disc brakes deliver superior braking power, better modulation, are safer, lighter, and more reliable. Braking power in particular is very important to regular people who just want to ride their bike and use their brakes without needing death grip forearms. The guy sounds like a super bike snob. He even knows that rim br…
Hydraulic disc brakes are not lighter than rim counterparts. When manufacturers have both versions of a bike you can usually expect a ~1kg penalty for the disc version.
This does not match my experience. Can you give some examples?
Re: Disc Brakes Took over the Cycling World. Here's Why That Was a Mistake
#24Disc brakes have been infiltrating BMX, too, which is hilarious because you don't even need brakes in BMX.
Re: Disc Brakes Took over the Cycling World. Here's Why That Was a Mistake
#25I used to do fast descents of Bonny Doon and similar. Think 60Mph / 100kmhr at the base. With my fat butt and damp brakes I would run through the stop signs at the bottom using rim brakes. I’ll never go back to rim brakes now that I’ve had discs. I still use my rim brake bikes for clear weather around town. For real work it is discs every single time. The author seems to have only used bicycles in optimal conditions.
I'm old and back in the day all we had were caliper brakes on road bikes and I rode two centuries in the rain in a paceline and somehow we all survived, as did all those decades of Tour de France riders. Maybe guys can only do "real work" with disc brakes now, but at least in the past riders managed with rim brakes outside of optimal conditions. Maybe excessive smartphone usage is compromising grip strength these days...
Re: Disc Brakes Took over the Cycling World. Here's Why That Was a Mistake
#26I have one bike with rim brakes, my Brompton, which is slow, and small.
I would never buy or build a full size full time bike that doesn’t have at least mechanical discs. It is a no brainer. Full stop. (Heh, get it???)
The four pots on my cargo bike can stop me, another adult, and itself (200kg or so) in what feels like 5 feet from 20mph. They are powerful enough that when I first got it I had to stop myself from pulling the levers so hard, cause I’d skid with barely any effort. Such a bike would be impossible with rims.
There’s being romantic about old bikes and old, simpler tech, but this is just dumb.
Re: Disc Brakes Took over the Cycling World. Here's Why That Was a Mistake
#27Uhhh yeah, do yourself a favor, pay no attention to this article. Always buy hydraulic disc brakes whenever possible. The rest of the bike can be whatever, but when it comes to stopping power, you will smile endlessly from the smooth yet responsive safety hydraulic disc brakes provide. They are inexpensive and easy to replace, and need much less maintenance to adjust. Every single time you brake, at all, you will be…
I love my disc brakes, but I don't like the hydraulic aspect of them. I do wish that they used cables, instead. Those are easier for me to maintain/repair. I only use my bike to commute, though, and I don't think that there's a real difference in performance between hydraulic and cable with that use case so it's all about ease of maintenance for me.
They make cable disc breaks and cable actuated hydraulic disc breaks as well.
Re: Disc Brakes Took over the Cycling World. Here's Why That Was a Mistake
#28The reason some of us MTBers switched: a single outing with rim-brakes in wet/muddy/dusty conditions would grind a set of pads to nothing (adding $25+ per outing for replacements), along with the wheel rim being ground thin to the point where the wheel wall would fail. Disc brakes last repeated use in adverse conditions and braking force remained consistent over many hours.
Re: Disc Brakes Took over the Cycling World. Here's Why That Was a Mistake
#29Uhhh yeah, do yourself a favor, pay no attention to this article. Always buy hydraulic disc brakes whenever possible. The rest of the bike can be whatever, but when it comes to stopping power, you will smile endlessly from the smooth yet responsive safety hydraulic disc brakes provide. They are inexpensive and easy to replace, and need much less maintenance to adjust. Every single time you brake, at all, you will be…
I love my disc brakes, but I don't like the hydraulic aspect of them. I do wish that they used cables, instead. Those are easier for me to maintain/repair. I only use my bike to commute, though, and I don't think that there's a real difference in performance between hydraulic and cable with that use case so it's all about ease of maintenance for me.
Hydraulics are much nicer feeling than cable discs (rim brakes feel way better than cable discs in my opinion). For bikes that you use a lot I think its worth getting hydraulics since you do need to maintain them either way.
I only choose cable discs on bikes I use extremely rarely (i.e. I keep one at my inlaws for when I visit once or twice a year and I wouldn't want to deal with hydraulics maintenance in that context).
Re: Disc Brakes Took over the Cycling World. Here's Why That Was a Mistake
#30Uhhh yeah, do yourself a favor, pay no attention to this article. Always buy hydraulic disc brakes whenever possible. The rest of the bike can be whatever, but when it comes to stopping power, you will smile endlessly from the smooth yet responsive safety hydraulic disc brakes provide. They are inexpensive and easy to replace, and need much less maintenance to adjust. Every single time you brake, at all, you will be…
I love my disc brakes, but I don't like the hydraulic aspect of them. I do wish that they used cables, instead. Those are easier for me to maintain/repair. I only use my bike to commute, though, and I don't think that there's a real difference in performance between hydraulic and cable with that use case so it's all about ease of maintenance for me.
I actually find hydraulic brakes much easier to maintain. They self adjust to account for wear and don’t suffer from cable stretch so I rarely need to adjust them. They need a bleed maybe once every few years but that is actually dead simple for shimano anyways.