Trp Spykes vs bb7

[Madmax1993]

Coming at this drop bar lever feel problem from a different angle: have you guys seen the Surly Corner bar? It lets you use a flat bar lever and shifter before changing groupset if you're trying out drop bars, but also means you don't need drop bar levers with your mechanical disk brakes on road/gravel bikes.

 

[rwm1962]

Being able to only brake from the drops rather than the hoods would be an issue for me.

 

[Imlach]

Update..

Brakes are biting more. I do get some squeals, fair bit of rubbing but they come to a nice stop now. Think a set of avid speed dials would have been preferable to my Chinese takeaway levers but they get the job done.

So far I've only had to adjust them once post ride and since then it's been rather fit and forget.

High hopes.

Now do they brake better than my cheap deore v brakes? No.

 

[M_Chavez]

do they brake better than my cheap deore v brakes? No.

Yet, most frames are coming out with disk only mounts and availability of rim-brake rims is falling too. Even the old school shops like Spa and St John's are succumbing.
I guess I'll just need to stock up on every rim size in rim brake version while they are still available at reasonable prices to last me until the end of my miserable life. I can leave it to the next generations to fiddle with the pizza cutter abominations. Even then the bike industry will shaft me again by completely switching all frames & tyres to 650A.

I'm guessing that running disk-only rims with rim brakes is a big no-no, but on the other hand, what can possibly go wrong for the first 5-10k miles..?

 

[Betsy]

Personally i think discs are just a bit hit and miss.. if they perform well they're better than rim brakes but if they don't.. they're worse.. the trick is figuring out why they're not performing as they were intended, with mechanical, the angle at which the cable enters the actuator arm has a lot to do with it, they don't work well with all frames, they need to be as free flowing as possible, no extreme cable angles..
Hydraulics? well.. i only wish i knew. My Hope Mini's work great.. my Magura are the opposite!

When we moved into our house my neighbour was a cycle commuter and rode a Boardman Halfords spesh.. come lockdown she started working from home (she still does) so she bought a Cube carbon road bike, f&f are lovely but in order to hit the low price point it was sold with shite components.
Cycling has since taken over her life (she does 120 miles every Sunday, 5am start, time trials and such) so she's destroying the components on a weekly basis... anyway i digress, i took her bike out for a spin last weekend because she's got some clicking noise from the crank (bb has already been replaced by lbs) and wanted a second opinion.. the performance of her cheap hydraulic disc brakes are absolutely fantastic.. better than my Klampers, better than my Mini's i didn't look what they were but based on the rest of the components they're going to be cheap.. erm shit

 

[M_Chavez]

I'm cycling on my caliper-brake road bike this morning when I come up behind a tight-lycra-clad lassie pedalling away at about 15mph.
Since I'm about to turn off anyway, I figure there's no harm in drafting behind her for a few hundred yards to enjoy the aerodynamic benefits and get a good close look at her rack (I think it was a Tubus Fly). Suddenly a car pulls out of a side road. I pull my brakes - squeal, grind, hiss crunch. I quickly and quietly come to an emergency stop on my rim brakes while the lass cruises on her squealing pizza cutters for another 15-20 yards, just about stopping in time before hitting the car. I've offered to perform CPR just to be on the safe side but got told it wasn't needed
She didn't look like she's assembled the bike herself from some spare parts, so it must have been sold to her that way.

 

[robfinger]

Aight, so hear me out here. So most road bikes come with 6" brake discs, but how many ppl have checked what's the largest they can run? Case in point my Edinburgh Revolution can fit 8" in the rear and 180 in the front with the rigid firk, and obviously 8" front if I swap in a suspension fork. The reason we don't get large rotors is that in theory their torque can damage the thin-tube frames and forks - and this is true to a point, like my Hayes Nines can flex a 35mm stanchions 66/888 Marzocchi during a full-on panic stop. But that's cause of their clamping force and high-friction pads - if you reduce just one of those two the brake torque drops too. And that's exactly the root of the issue ya'll are experiencing - either your pads ain't proper grabby (unlikely with most quality brakes), or your calipers ain't clamping strong (very likely with SRAMs lol), or both. So the cheapest and easiest way to offset this is by running a larger rotor - ebay has plenty brand new Avid G3s for little money, adapters are also plentiful and stupid-cheap. I got a pair of Shimano M400s or something on my "touring" bike and with Shimano discs and factory pads they will stop like yesterday, a pair of Tektro with 6" rotors doesn't do this for whatever reason but with 8" rotors it's close enough. Would I run a Hayes 9 or pretty much any Hope with 8" on a road bike - hell no, they'll pretzel the fork at least. But with weaker levers+calipers combo the larger rotors are a very viable solution to bring the performance to where it really ought to be off the bat.

 

[Imlach]

Updatesies

 

[Imlach]

Also yes I've yet to put crimps on the wire

 

[robfinger]

Move your complete front brake to the rear wheel, get a 180mm Magura rotor for the front and use the currently-rear brake with it. Reasoning being that due to weight transfer rear brakes always do less work so for one thing they'll take longer to break in and also need smaller rotor to achieve same braking as front wheel. Your front brake is already broken in so just pop it on the rear wheel and be done with that end of the bike for good (hopefully). Then you'll break the so-so brake in much faster and better on the front and with a larger rotor, plus you'll gain some much needed extra braking torque while at it.