I've been doing all my own wrenching on my bikes for a year or so, and I've now built up 3 bikes without any major issues. The bike I built in May now has 1500 great miles on it.

But I'm completely new to disc brakes. I've just built up a bike that's meant to be my winter road bike, but also serve some light off-road duty. It's a cx frame that will let me run either skinny road tires or wider cx tires for gravel. I figured it made sense to go with disc brakes.

I'm running campy ergo controllers with Avid BB7 road calipers and 160mm rotors front and rear. After many days of reading and setting them up over and over, here's where I stand: I find it basically impossible to get good feel at the brake lever (with short pulls) while also having the rotors NOT rub the pads. I can dial them in perfectly on the stand (no rub, and good short pulls) but then they rub on the road. I can then back off the pads so that they don't rub, but now I really only get the brake to engage fully with the brake lever almost pulled all the way to the bars.

I've trued the rotors, and I've aligned the caliper MANY times – so many that I now feel confident I'm doing it right – and I've made certain that the both wheels are fully in the dropouts with good, tight QR levers. So here are some questions I have:

1. Is a little bit of run just how road disc brakes work? Do other people just live with a bit of scraping? Or do they just live with pulling the brake lever ALL the way to the bars?

2. Any chance that there is something wrong with my brand new cx forks and they are flexing enough to cause this? (I can get no rub on the bike stand but they still rub on the road until I back them off even further.)

3. Any chance the rub will go away after a couple hundred miles (I have 25 test miles, including up and down steep hills, on them now).

4. Finally, what about the TRP Spyre? I'm told these are less finicky to set up, and also told that they work better with campy levers. If those things are true, I'll happily spend the few extra bucks to switch to them, but if they are going to have the same problems, then why bother. Before I make that move I'm trying to find out if they really are a better mechanical disc setup for roadbikes, or just a better disc brake that has the same fundamental issues.

5. Anything else I'm missing?