Originally Posted by Biker395

1. Not really all that significant for me. But for me the braking advantages for discs are also not all that significant. Remember, I ride on dry pavement 99.9% of the time. My rim brakes are more than adequate.

2. Gonna disagree on that one. I find taking those through axles out to be a PITA. First, I have to fish out a wrench from my bag. Gotta loosen the bolt and pull it out. Put the wrench back in my bag (yes, I have forgotten to do that). My friends bike had an o-ring in there that made that difficult (not all are the same ... another gotcha). Then, when you reinstall, gotta do all the same again. And if they are hydraulics, be careful not to grab those brake levers, or you'll be pushing the brake pads out to get the tire on or to fix rubbing. QRs are much simpler and quicker to remove wheels, hands down.

2b. Here is another. I have old fashioned roof racks ... the kind you need to drop a fork into. Can't do that with a through axle. Now I need to buy new racks too.

3. Neither are noisy as hell in my experience. What I am referring to is that shing-shing noise you get from the disc rubbing against the pads, which is a chronic problem with my friends disc brakes. You're going to say that my friends brakes are either lousy disc brakes (not true) or they are misadjusted (probably true), but all I can say is that they are chronically noisy in that way.

4. Brake pads need very infrequent replacement, and it is a trivial matter to check for wear. Not so with discs. I think the difficulty in replacement is a wash.

That's not to say that discs do not have advantages. They certainly do. And in some applications (MTB, wet weather), those advantages are meaningful enough to choose them over rim brakes. But for me, a roadie who rides in dry weather, and does his own wrenching ... not so much.

All that being said, my next bike purchase may well include disc brakes. Like it or not, rims are a dying technology.

And that brings me to a final thought. Probably the biggest reason for the push to discs for road applications is simple ... they are definitely advantageous for MTBs, and it makes dollar sense to them to have ONE type of brakes to manufacture and support.