New bike - would you choose disc or rim brake ?
- Thread starter foz
- Start date
georges1
Retro Guru
Rim Brakes, because it requires skills to know how to brake with a rim brake bike in very adverse conditions and I find also disc brakes more finicky and more complicated to maintain than rim brakes. Plus when you needed to change a spoke on disc brake wheel, it is expensive, also a disc brake bike weights more than a rim brake one.
I pushed for the re issue due to uk’s appetite . Thankfully Tony caved in and we did a production run but unfortunately the XS and XL moulds had been retired and wasn’t economical viable to replace. Just over 60% of UK allocation have been sold. We still have a reasonable qty split between US and SK factory. Just had one sent to Tom at Kustom Flow for customer who wanted some custom paint
I accept that rim brakes need more skill day to day but fundamentally they require too much hand force to stop in the steeps when its wet. Its not about how its that the hand force needed is too high. With discs its finger force always.
Disc brake maintenance? Literally no maintenance on my road bike brakes in over a year. One bleed on install, the metal pads will last me a decade on the road. Compare with rim braking where the pads are eaten by grit and need adjusting and replacement, and cleaning, all so the rim can be worn through by braking. The difference is far more stark on mtb where there's no more slurry of mud to eat everything even faster.
Spoke changes with disc brake wheel? What the heck are you on about? Do you mean it is difficult to remove the disc from a wheel? 6 bolts or centerlock, there's no extra expense or rocket science involved. They use the same spokes as rim brake wheels, everything is the same after you've removed the disc rotor.
Do you perhaps mean the Kool-Kid's aero wheels with internal spoke nipples? Yes those are a disaster, especially with tubeless - but that is nothing to do with disc brakes. Ditto for wheels with proprietary and unsupported spoke systems but again that is nothing to do with disc brakes.
The one big argument in favor of rim brakes is weight.
I'm astounded at the resistance that road biking has had against disc brakes.
georges1
Retro Guru
During more than 60 years rim brakes have been what defined the road bike braking then in 1990 came dura ace 7410 shimano with its dual pivot and redefined what is the road braking system. Disc brakes appeared in 2015 on road bikes.Like I said it depends how were your rim brake calipers set.If they are well set from the start and if you have durable good quality pads they will last you long enough. As for wearing a rim that depends of how you brake with a rim brake or if the rim has a ceramic coating it will wear but I have still seen people using their rim brake wheels for 10 years without any problems. None of my MTBs has disc brakes but V brakes , the majority of them have the XT 780 Touring Vbrake which doesn't have the default of the deformable parallelogram found on the XT 750/760/770 and on the XTR 950/962/970 Vbrakes and only one has the Avid Arch Rival Vbrakes. I never carred for disc brakes and never will.
You can't do radial spoking like on rim brakes with disc brakes, I know some people who came back to rim brake bikes because their disc brakes was a headache for maintenance and heavy weight of the bike.
Rim brakes wheels are lighter, allow radial spoking, stiffer and much faster. Braking with a rim brake bike requires and always required skill. Road biking is more traditionnalist than MTB also many people will tell you than the 9-10-11 speeds era before 2015 was the one which produced some of the best rim brakes bikes. I am not also mentionning than a lot of the big names are making them bikes overseas and when it comes to buy a bike at a certain price tag, I would rather have something older made in Uk or in USA or in Italy or in France or in Japan or in Taiwan(Giant and Merida) but I wouldn't buy personally a bike made in China. Plus add to this that the aesthetics of new groupsets are not the nicest, that is also why people prefer something older and much classy which make them avoid new groups that propose standard disc brakes.
Discs brakes & road bikes with narrow tyres really don’t mix as no control on downhills when it comes to Modulation.. it just seems more crashes are occurring in the pro peloton also as they don’t get to choose. Personally I’ll be sticking with rim brakes & keep disc brakes for off-road MTB & gravel bikes with fat tyres
This is starting to sound to me like you guys don't have any idea what you're talking about. Have you ridden modern hydraulic road discs?
Around here our mtb trails are wet roots and mud, there's no traction and yet we must brake to keep the speed down.
There is way more grip on the road on a road bike than any mtb where your speed is literally limited by your ability to brake. Modulation is the name of the game in mtb and my road discs are just as good - perfect control from the hoods with 2 fingers of force.
I had r785 shifters but I hated the shape of the hoods. Upgraded to r8100 and they're perfect for my hands.
I am wary of the unrepairable clockwork complexity in all the brifters but the hydraulics have been bombproof.
Guinessisgoodforyou
rBotM Winner
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