Originally Posted by
spectastic
I don't race cyclocross. I'm building a do it all bike for touring, commuting, and light trails. the bike has alfine 8, which comes in 135 rear spacing, and most frames with that drop out spacing are disc. I could try filing it down to 130, but would much rather not... anyway, I would avoid disc brakes altogether if at all possible, because v brake pads supposedly last a lot longer. But if I'm stuck with disc brakes, I'd rather get something cheap, and mechanical setups appeal to me as something simple and easy to maintain.
what about those cheap ebay disc brake sets? they're like $30 for the lever, brake, and rotor (maybe even cable). for basic needs, are they adequate, or bad news?
We have BB7 on our road tandem. They seem fine. I think you can get a set for $70 with rotors? I think I did, for my yet-to-be-assembled mtb. Older rotor cut price dramatically.
Currently tandem BB7 (oem) are paired with 10s Ergo levers so no special lever. They use "downhill" rotors (dunno what that means but that's what the shop guy said). Maybe 180mm? 220mm? Whatever larger than the normal one. Max speeds 45 mph, bike/riders weight just under 400 lbs for many rides, probably closer to 340 lbs if we were to go out now. No problems with braking.
Apparently on very fast tandem descents the rotor gets melty. There's a shot of a tandem here on BF, ridden by BFers, where the rotor looks like it's flopping over at the top. Might be video distortion etc but looks weird. This is on a tandem so 70 mph and 300-400 lbs of bike/riders and prolonged descending.
After my initial "I don't like discs" knee jerk reaction to the road disc rule thing I decided that my next bike may have discs. Reason? Wet weather braking. Also no questions about carbon/aluminum - I can get used to braking reaction regardless of which wheel I'm riding.