[QUOTE=ksisler;14924899]
Mostly agree. Wanted to probe the larger audience regarding; Are a lot of folks really wearing out rims due to contact with brake pads? If so, what kind of riding are they doing, such as extreme downhill mountain trails, riding through sand, etc. Are they using super thin walled rims, etc. Are they folks who do not keep their pads clean, trimmed, and adjusted on a regular basis...?
I ride 52 weeks/year in the PNW. I wear out about 1 rim/year on my tandem. When I only rode singles, I wore out about 1 rim every other year until I bought Mavic Open Pro Ceramics, the last wet weather single rims I hope I ever buy. Unfortunately, they don't make them any more. If I'd known they'd stop, I'd have put a couple by. It's not uncommon for people who ride in our group to wear out a pair of Open Pros in one season.
I run Koolstop Salmon pads on aluminum, green pads on Ceramic. I'm an aggressive rider, but mostly it's that I do a lot of hills and paceline work in the rain in an area that sands its roads in the winter time. Brakes on rims sounds like grinding paste, which it is. I've tried a few different rims. MA2s were a thick-walled rim, not made anymore. Most rim brake tracks seem about the same thickness now. Everyone I ride with has about the same experience. Yes, I wash my bike between rides or at least wipe the rims down with alcohol. In any case, I spend much more money on tires than I do on rims. $100/rim/year even for the tandem is not an intolerable expense, amortized over ~4000 miles, or about 2.5 cents per mile. Heck, I spend several times that on coffee stops for the two of us.
For the thread, I run Avid V-brakes on Deep-V rims on the tandem. They work fine for sport riding in the mountains for our 305 lb. team. If you need more brakes than that, you might think about leaving some gear at home. For loaded touring in hilly or mountainous regions, we switch to our rear wheel with the Arai drum brake, but then we're about 400 lbs. all up.
Thinking about all this stuff, on a tandem group ride descent of Mt. Ventoux, the only tandems which made it down with brakes still working were either running rim brakes or rim brakes plus an Arai drum. The discs all failed. Those running just rims had the sense to stop and let them cool. This was about a year ago. Discs have gotten a little better since then. On group tandem rides, disc failures about match the tires blown off rim brake bikes, fortunately after the bikes had stopped. I haven't had a tire blown off a Deep-V rim, presumably because of the greater thermal mass. Something to keep in mind when specing a rim brake touring bike. Great rims, too.
Cyclocross bikes, MTBs, and road race bikes don't have much in common with touring bikes other than two wheels. Tandems are more similar.