Originally Posted by
jefnvk
They were implying that rim brakes easily wear the rims to a point of catastrophic failure. Far be it from me to imply I have ridden bikes enough to know how quickly a rim wears to the point of failure, but the fact is I have decades old bikes that seemingly were used and abused whose rims are just fine.
Jefnvk, the point I was making is that brake pads for rims have to be chosen so that they do not unduly abrade the metal. If rims were treated as just a huge disk brake, with disk brake pads, they wouldn’t last long.
My posts in this section have simply been about the engineering limitations on rim brakes, which disk brakes are not affected by. Thus, disk brakes can use pads that are more aggressive in the wet and muddy conditions.
I hope this explanation resolves your confusion.