Originally Posted by
FrenchFit
My two cents: panic stops are not good for bikes or cars. I've screwed up brakes and rims fooling around, I'm much kinder to bike brakes now. I taught panic stops to my daughter teaching her to drive, she blew out the front brakes lines in my BMW. The average OEM components are not really built to these stresses. Doesn't mean you can't upgrade, but you are just eating up parts by pushing it to the limits. got sponsor?
It wasn't the panic stop that blew out the brakes on your BMW nor let the cable come loose on Rubato's bike. The mechanisms in both cases failed but it was not the actions that causes failure but the mechanisms themselves. Brakes in cars and brakes in bikes should be able to do hundreds or thousands of hard stops
if the mechanism is working properly.
If you baby your equipment unnecessarily, it might last longer but you won't know if the equipment is going bad nor, more importantly, you won't know how to deal with situations where you
have to make a panic stop.
Originally Posted by
Angry_Monkey
Agreed! Good thing to know, but practicing them regularly is inviting trouble. Both systems are designed for panic stops, but not as normal operation.
I'm also familiar with how steep some of the streets are in Seattle. A panic stop on flat land is one thing, in Seattle, one wayward stone or pothole, and even a properly executed panic stop is not going to save you.
~Monkey~
And if you don't know how to stop on the steep streets of Seattle, a poorly executed panic stop isn't going to do you any good either. In fact, it will do you more harm.
Originally Posted by
xenologer
zip tie the cable's head into carrier on brake lever
That wouldn't work in every lever I've seen. There is, simply, no room in the lever for a zip tie. A zip tie would jam the mechanism.
I suspect, Rubuto, that your brakes may have been binding prior to the cable coming out. The brakes weren't returning properly after you release the lever. The brakes when released will pull tension on the cable and keep the head in cable carrier. All of the cable carriers I've seen on road and flat bar levers (which is yours?) aren't easy to get the cable to come out of when you have no tension on the brakes. I suspect either a sticky cable in the housing or binding on the brakes themselves.
Don't pay attention to the naysayers on stopping. I brake hard most of the time. It's not going to hurt anything that isn't already failing and you should keep your equipment in good working order all the time.
As for the Seatle hills, your choice is to either ride the brakes from the top of the hill to the bottom or let the bike roll and brake hard where you need to. The former causes more brake pad wear and rim wear while the latter doesn't. I've had numerous discussions on these forums with people who have to stop 3 times on a 3 mile downhill to let their brakes cool down. I can ride down a mountain road for miles and miles at very high speeds without overheating the brakes on any bike.