Originally Posted by
cyccommute
I don't know what you people do to wear out rims. I've worn out (maybe) 3 rims in 70,000+ miles of road, mountain bike, touring and commuting riding in all seasons and all kinds of conditions. All three rims were on my mountain bikes but it took years to wear them out. I did a 1200 mile 4 week loaded tour in 2011 that had 86,000 feet of descending and I still have the same rubber pads on the bike...and those pads had done several tours before the last one. And that wasn't 4 weeks of dry weather. My year around commuter bike has 12,000 miles on the wheels and they aren't even close to wearing out. I don't know what you do to your rims but I certainly don't baby mine and they seem to last up much longer than 2 years.
a mtb rim is a completely different beast from the rims i routinely used (mostly open pros/sports).
i descend ~120-180 thousand feet each year often in
wet and gritty conditions. the speed of my descents also likely contributed to accumulation of grit underneath pads. on drop bar road bikes (fair weather bikes) i typically get 5-8 years of rim wear.
i do agree that disc brake pads wear more rapidly than good quality rim brake pads. organic pads are particularly bad.