Originally Posted by
chaadster
What's difficult to understand is why some people can't understand the difference between saying different types of brakes work sufficiently well, and saying there are discernible differences in the way they perform.
So again, in any one person's world, their sidepulls, cantis, Vs, or discs might work sufficiently well for their needs. Whoopee...who cares? Because in the rest of the world, there are conditions that impact not only the function of the brakes, but the users perception of how good they feel to use, their ease of maintenance, and their value.
If you think cantis work as well as discs in the cold, snow, wet, and mud, you are a fool or a liar. If you think that having rim brakes grind away at your sidewalls, throwing nasty, black grime from wet rides, having pads come out of alignment compromising performance or scuffing your wheel or tire graphics, or needing to remember to reset your brakes after wheel removal, needing readjust your brakes for pad wear or changes, and needing wrenches for most common issues are all minor, and even fun stuff to deal with, go do your thing, dude, but a lot of people are not impressed by your definition of "just as good."
I don't have particular troubles with my sidepulls or Vs, either, but there's no doubt that if cost and weight issues were removed from the equation, that I'd run discs because they're better and allow more options in terms of rim material, design, and finish. As I used as an example before, I'm interested in deep section carbon rims, but worried about rim brake performance. Disc brake carbon deep section erases that concern and opens up the possibility of all carbon for me.
Wow. Somebody ate his Grumpies recently.
Just because some of us don't agree that disc brakes are like night and day like you seem to feel they are, doesn't make us fools or liars. Those are strong words, got anything to back them up? I've used cantilever brakes and linear brakes for far more cold, wet, snow, ice, mud, sand, stream crossing, fast wet downhills on-road and off- for many more years than I've used discs. I tour on a bike with cantilevers. I have mountain biked with cantilevers. I've done 50 mph downhills off the Smoke Mountains with a touring load in a driving rain and stopped just fine, in fact better than "just fine", thank you very much. I stopped when and where I needed to and no hub mounted disc could have performed any better.
I even had icy rides where the disc has failed to stop entirely which is not something I've every experienced with rim brakes.
I am fully capable of assessing whether or not brakes work not only sufficiently but exactly the same as any other brake and, again, I find no difference between disc and hubs in effectiveness nor, for the matter, in cleanliness. While a minuscule amount of the crap that is thrown onto your bike during wet rides comes from the brakes, most of it comes from the road and not brake is going to keep your bike clean in wet weather.
And if you have to "reset your brakes after a wheel removal" you are doing something wrong. Another newsflash, disc pads need to be adjustment for wear just as well.
Frankly, I'm not sure that there are a whole lot of people impressed by your definition of "superior".