Rim brake road bikes becoming rare

magicbastarder

a kitchen scouring pad (not a brillo pad) and a little bit of jif would probably do just as good a job.

ILIKEFOOD

I recently bought a new set of Mavic Carbon SL 40s - rim brake for my 2014 bike.. I have serious buyers remorse now as I'm thinking that it will be awhile now until I can justify a bike upgrade.. like I should have just put the money towards a new DB bike.. Doh! That said the wheels are class..

byrnem31

Out this morning on the 105 rims in the wet. Not a bother and they stopped me fine and did not screech like a banshee. You cant beat a good rim job.

Weepsie

Out this morning on SRAM force and last night in the wet discs. Also didn't scream. Setup is important.

I hear plenty of squealing rim brakes too. I had one bike that no matter how well adjusted it squeeled like a pig. I like to think I crashed it on purpose

My Ultegra discs are another matter.

Paul_Mc1988

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119139133#Comment_119139133

Was going down leixlip hill last week in the rain riding with Swiss stop carbon pads and carbon rims... nearly died.... had not rode in the rain in two years and forgot how much of a delay there is in the wet.

For aluminium brake surface any brake type will do.... for carbon I'd go with disk for sure.

ARX

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119140393#Comment_119140393

Is it just that in the wet there's a delay and then the braking is ok, or is it the case that there's a delay and then the braking is poor?

Alltricks sent me a pair of carbon pads by mistake, so I feel obliged to get a carbon wheelset so they won't go to waste.

Paul_Mc1988

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119140441#Comment_119140441

There's a delay then the braking is good... not as good as it is in the dry. But the delay could catch you out....

Say its pissing out and your in tight group and doing 35kph and someone in front hits the brakes.... you may be in a sticky situation.

secman

I'm always a little wary riding behind disc brake bikes even in dry as I know they will stop quicker... 4 bikes are all rim, 2 winter's on alu wheelset and 2 summers on carbons wheelset. All mechanical too....Total ludite here 😃

gn3dr

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119123002#Comment_119123002

If you can lock up the rear wheel with rim brakes and throw yourself out over the bars with the front, then disc brakes are not going to improve braking performance outside of the amount of force needed at the lever to do both those things. But that is not improving braking performance, it's just reducing the effort needed to pull the lever. There is a point at which the tyre contact on the road is the factor that makes the difference. If both types of brakes lock up a wheel then there is no effective braking difference between them. I think there is even an argument that you will have better braking control and modulation with rim brakes.

magicbastarder

if there is, you're the first person i've ever heard make that claim, to be fair.

DaveyDave

If your discs squeak then just change the type of pads. Can't remember if it's resin/organic pads that are noisy or metal/sintered. Articles I'm reading point towards metal but I don't remember them squeaking on my MTB and I only used metal pads when I got hydraulic discs.

My road discs squeak a little just as I'm coming to a stop sometimes in the wet and I'm pretty sure they're resin pads.

JMcL

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119141434#Comment_119141434

You certainly can with both brake types, the discs will stop the wheel rotating faster than rim brakes though, so even if you grab a large handful of brake at the same instant as somebody in front with them on disc, you on rim brakes, there'll be a small amount of time, probably just fractions of a second, before the rim brakes start. so for arguments sake (and simplicity of calculation) you're doing 36km/h at the time, and it takes 0.2s (arbitrarily chosen) for the rim brakes to bite, you'll end up 2m further up the road before your your wheel locks - at which point the stopping distance becomes largely an equation of who ate the most pies.

From my own perspective, my commute home (when I was in the office) involves a right turn at a roundabout on a dual carraigeway at the bottom of a 6% hill. I always take primary on the outer lane on the way down to make the turn, which usually involves a fair dollop of speed and minimise the risk of being ploughed into by some inattentive bell-end. I had the odd brown chamois moment on damp winter evenings on rim brakes - feathering the brakes to clear off the water, then trying to make them stop the bike and having that period of time which probably seems way longer than it actually is when the bike continues at the same speed. Disks have sorted that and I've had little or no trouble with them in the past 6 years

byrnem31

Ok, real test today coming back from viewpoint to tallaght on rim after many years on discs. The 105 rims were just as good. I honestly would not notice the difference in performance. The 105 rims were very capable slowing down into corners etc. My brakes are on opposite sides but other than that, i was very happy with the 105 rims.

cletus

That settles it so...

cletus

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119157787#Comment_119157787

Or does it 🤔🤔🤔

https://youtu.be/BIwVbaLMezw

CantGetNoSleep

I'm still on the fence in this discussion - I'm a big fan of discs in general but still appreciate the weight, simplicity and cost of rim brakes (as per my earlier post about a CAAD12 I picked up for 850).

One thing that continues to baffle me however is why cable discs still exist on relatively high end bikes. I just spotted an ad from a LBS for a 2500+ Kona with cable discs and regularly see them on Genesis etc in a similar price range.

I could maybe understand in the beginning when hydraulic shifters were a bit of a rarity, or even now on an entry level bike to keep the cost down, but spending 2k+ and seeing the brand cheaping out on a component which will have a huge impact on functionality just annoys me.

magicbastarder

I have the trp hybrid brakes - which work absolutely fine - but you'd have thought one of the main reasons good disk brakes work well is the incompressibility of the hydraulic fluid. On mine, the brake cable runs all the way to the brake so I'm not sure how much benefit having a hydraulic reservoir at the brake itself makes.

CramCycle

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119163864#Comment_119163864

Only thing I can think of is they are basically the same as the non hybrid, with a minor addition) and it was cheaper to manufacture that way, rather than two completely different lines, one for cable and one for hydraulics. (I am probably completely wrong)

fat bloke

Yeah cable brakes on a 2 grand bike when a 600 quid mountain bike gets hydraulic?

T'aint fair!

ED E

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119163826#Comment_119163826

Same reason Liv can sell bikes with suicide brakes. Lots of consumers have NO idea what they're buying.

Only thing I can think of is they are basically the same as the non hybrid, with a minor addition) and it was cheaper to manufacture that way, rather than two completely different lines, one for cable and one for hydraulics. (I am probably completely wrong)

AFAIK you want the hydraulic as the pistons then self "balance" between both sides. And as you say using cables makes it plug and play with existing shifters.

byrnem31

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119157712#Comment_119157712

Ok, exact same route this morning but it was very wet coming back down. This is where you'd notice the rims compared to discs. The rims performed fine but the dics have the advantage in the wet downhill. Rims still did the job though.

Its not helping with the brakes being on back to front either so im going to have to sort that out. Gp 4000s were slipping in the wet puttting power down going uphill too so i wasn't overly confident coming back down with them either.

Weepsie

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119164012#Comment_119164012

I've had both. The Hy/rds (and similar) juin techs are just better than the regular spyres. More than a minor upgrade imo

MojoMaker

No matter wat tyre you have on you'll slip going uphill out of the saddle in the wet. Worse for heavier riders though.

At least coming down you have bodyweight over both wheels which should completely do away with any sense of a lack of grip.

byrnem31

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119167138#Comment_119167138

The gp 4000s. They are a very good tyre. I can see why they were so popular. Very cushy ride with them.

MojoMaker

Great tyre alright. Hard to find (new) nowadays sadly.

There's a section of road on the Reservoir Dog that must be 18% and in the wet it's a genuine comedy of errors with rear wheel slips.

Even Stocking Lane in the wet is a handful.

magicbastarder

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119166706#Comment_119166706

i wonder where the difference lies; you'd think a cable acting directly on the piston would be not much difference to a cable acting on a hydraulic mechanism to act on the piston. maybe it's the lever required in a purely mechanical setup where the efficiency is lost?

JMcL

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119166706#Comment_119166706

Same here. I've Hy/Rds on the Croix de Fer and recent Ultegra hydraulics on the go fast(er) bike. The Ultegras have maybe slightly better feel, but there wouldn't be much in it. I've never had any issue with the Hy/Rds bar an odd incident down near Bordeaux some years ago when I got taken off track (literally) by relying on Google for navigation in sh1t3 weather. I ended up on trails which in dry weather would've been lovely, but here there was Somme like fine abrasive mud which stripped the pads in less than an hour. I was saved a long walk by the fact it's all flat. I'd guess any pads/brakes would have suffered something similar in the circumstances, and I shudder to think about subjecting a nice set of rims to it

Daroxtar

That would be Cunard. The first couple of hundred yards are lethal in the wet. Moss/algae/leaves and it's definitely 15% or more.

Macy0161

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119171427#Comment_119171427

You missed sheep shít off the list!

magicbastarder

Speaking of brakes and maintenance, I got caught in a heavy shower a few weeks ago on the bike and gave it a quick wash later. But today I found myself picking tiny shards of metal out of the brake blocks with a pin. I assume it could have been tiny bits of grit which got embedded in them in the wet; and I also gave the brake blocks a scuffing with some sandpaper and could tell the difference in this evenings cycle.