Originally Posted by
frankiejr
Does anyone have any experience with disc brake calipers, and/or any suggestions for disc brakes? I know Avid makes a BB7 road, but I have no idea how they perform compared to the mountain version. Is the clearance tighter?
I have BB7 Road calipers on my touring bike. I use them with Shimano Ultegra STI levers and they work very well indeed. I honestly can't tell any difference between the BB7 Road calipers I have now and the BB7 mountain bike calipers I've used in the past. Presumably, the Road calipers expect a different amount of cable to be pulled but other than that they seem almost identical.
I guess a lot of my confusion about this leads back to "why did Surly choose BB7 Mountain over BB7 Road?" My assumption is the lack of road disc lever options, so I'm also posting this thread to get input on that as well.
I doubt lack of levers was the issue. If you look at Surly's line-up they offer one, and only one, disc brake caliper: the Avid BB7 Mountain. It seems likely they bought a truckload of them, at a discount price, and decided to use them everywhere they needed a disc brake caliper. All of their complete bikes are built to a price-point, so they probably can't afford to spec the ideal components on every bike...