Originally Posted by DWhitworth

My (recently stolen) Specialized Elite Disc Pro had BB5 disc brakes. They were decent enough compared to the Schwinn cantilever cheapy bike I had before. The BB5 is fixed, so you have to manually adjust the inner pad every so often. They were nice in that they worked fine in wet/nasty conditions.

As noted, that bike got stolen 3 weeks ago (1 week before a big charity ride, the whole reason I started biking 3 years ago). In shopping for a new bike, there just isn't a whole lot sitting in stock in 61-63CM sizes and I was in a time crunch big time. If I was stuck buying a new bike, I also wanted to upgrade. I ended up riding a Scott CR1-10 with Ultegra rim brakes - before the test ride, the guy said you might not like these brakes...but it was the opposite - they are a lot better than the discs ever were on the former bike. I could not lock the wheels on the old bike and can easily on the Scott.

I don't know enough to draw too much of a conclusion here. I know that BB5 are absolute low end mechanical discs and (presumably( Ultegra Caliper brakes are high (er) end. Particular to the Scott frame, tire clearance is tight and most disc brake models I looked at in other brands had much more flexibility in tire size which would be very important to a clyde.

I don't really plan on buying another bike for a while, but if/when I do, I would lean towards disc, but only if better than BB5.

DaveW