Stun

To me, disc brakes are 100% the way to go in really bad snow/slush. Does anyone disagree. I am getting a new commuter bike so I want honest opinions!

jdswitters

My 4 season commuter has hub brakes, disk brakes can still get wet although they work much better in a heavy snow or rain than rim brakes. Of course there is the weight penalty.

DiabloScott

I'd put it somewhere less than 100%, but certainly a good choice.

RaleighSport

I'd say the answer is fixed gear not that I'd ride a brakeless fixie in the snow..

xtrajack

I'm all about the disc brakes, I like them much better than rim brakes of any sort. My next bike will have discs.

dynaryder

Switched to discs after glancing off a car during my first snow commute. Won't run anything but in the snow.

Weight penalty vs rim brakes? Cuz pretty sure my BB7's are way lighter than any hub brakes.

jdswitters

Obviously hub brakes / coaster brakes have the weight penalty.

tjspiel

Good rim brake pads like Kool Stops help a lot but are not as good as discs in wet conditions. What I've found though is I'm usually not going that fast in snow on my studded tires anyway and the biggest impediment to stopping is poor road traction as opposed to brake performance.

I do have disc brakes on my winter bike now and I wouldn't choose to go back to rim brakes but I'm not afraid to ride in the snow with them if need be. I managed for about 8 years without discs.

For mild winter weather I think that hub/roller brakes are the best. Disc brakes work well but squeal like banshees if there is any kind of crud on the rotors. Also the disc brake pads were pretty much shot after two winters and not that many miles. Roller brakes are nice and quiet and they are also dead simple to set up and adjust. The problem with them is that they are quite heavy and roller brakes at least suffer from added drag in very cold weather due to the grease gumming up.

Stun

tjspiel, thanks for mentioning the Kool Stops. Does anyone else have experience with those?

blakcloud

Disc brakes are a must for me in the winter. I wouldn't ride my bike in the winter if it didn't have them. Then again I wouldn't ride my bike if it didn't have studded tires either. Sure you can ride your bike in the winter without either of those two things but if you have the choice why not. Keep in mind that people on this board experience different kinds of winter.

Artkansas 

I don't live so far north that it makes much difference. Though there have been a couple of times that I've appreciated real smoooth braking when riding down an icy hill. Luckily, I had just had my rim trued.

tsl

I run KoolStop salmons on my rim brake bikes, and have BB7s on my primary commuter. The KoolStops are better than other rim brake pads, but in both the wet and the snow, they don't hold a candle to the discs.

Plus the discs have the advantage of not grinding away at your rims. I know others have had different experiences, but one single winter wore my first bike's rims concave. That's what put discs on my bullet list for a new commuter.

tsl

Too true. The OP seems to be from Michigan. All three of us will have experience with lake effect.

wolfchild

I use avid BB7's and I like them a lot..But in winter I also love my fixed gear drivetrain with a low gear ratio. Don't even have to use brakes to stop.

PennyTheDog

I've never tried disc brakes, but I've never really felt like I was lacking stopping power no matter the conditions. I have cantilever brakes on one bike and v-brakes on the other, and I felt perfectly comfortable riding in Minneapolis in the winter. Riding without studded tires, on the other hand, was completely terrifying!

fietsbob

Sturmey Archer drum brake hubs have been on my go-to winter bike now ,25 years.. so not the only one..


Studded tires for black ice on the roads.

less lake effect than the cold air mass east of the cascades coming down the gorge to the sea.

chaadster

Best stopping power is not the only reason to go with discs; in the wet, they're much cleaner than rim brakes, and ease of maintenance is better than anything else, though I haven't ridden a roller hub in 10 years and may be out of date with the tech nowadays, but I suspect the tech is in exactly the same place it was back then, which is to say 10 years behind v-brakes in terms of stopping power.

Speaking of which, I assume by 'rim brakes' we're all talking Vs here; you have to be a psycho/sadist to run cantilevers these days. Or some retro-cyclocross freak.

cyccommute 

Stopping power has almost nothing to do with the brakes. The limitations on braking are where the rubber, literally, meets the road. The amount of grip that you can get from tires drops precipitously with water and ice. Having more powerful brakes doesn't make that situation any better.

I don't even agree that discs give the best stopping power. I have bikes with cantilever, v-brake, mechanical disc, hydraulic disc and a bike with mechanical disc on the front and a v-brake on the back. No a single one stops any better than any other one. There is difference between the brakes on the disc front/v-brake rear bike just as there no difference between the way that my cantilevers and the hydraulic stop the bikes. If anything the hydraulics are incredibly touchy and difficult to moderate.

There are lots of bikes that run cantilevers. Cantilevers are a very good braking system. They aren't even that difficult to set up. Discs are more difficult to set up and maintain. Disc rotors are a pain to get straight and they bend easily. I futz more with rubbing disc than I've ever had to work on any other brake.

Mr. Hairy Legs

The only issue I've had with V-brakes in freezing conditions was when the little rubber springy tube things that keep them spread out froze (filled with slush and gunk) and the brakes suddenly failed to engage. This of course happened on an icy hill. I fixed the problem by cutting half of the little rubber springy tube things off.

I've yet to try my disc brakes in snow, but I expect them to be a little more predictable.

chaadster

Should I even...nawww! I can't, its all just so...

RIDICULOUS!

WMBIGS

My first winter commuting was on a Redline Monocog with linear pull brakes. If there was fresh snow on the ground, I learned to put the bike outside for a while so the rims would get cold. If the rims were warm, the snow would get on the rim and melt, then freeze. Absolutely no braking effect at that point.
Ran discs for three winters. I will be building a non disc bike for year round riding. If the snow gets deep enough, I'll take the mtn bike. The studded tires and platform pedals have been what really kept me riding in winter.

Sixty Fiver

I have been running cantis, cantis with a chainstay brake, and Shimano v-brakes for 10 winters and also like a fixed gear for winter riding... my Pugsley has disc brakes and does not stop any better than the others in winter conditions.

In the winter the rear brake gets more of a workout as too much stopping power off the front just leads to irrecoverable skids.

Sixty Fiver

I usually have to warn people that when they ride my v-brake equipped bikes that they might not be used to the stopping power they offer as they have this misconception that a disc brake is automatically superior.

My XTR cantis have equally great stopping power in all kinds of weather.

My expedition bike has a front canti and a chainstay brake... it will stop me and 40 - 50 pounds of gear on a dime.

The utility bike had the same brake set up and would pull trailers that were loaded up to 200 pounds and again... no stopping problem there.

alan s 

Let me put it this way...there is a reason why so few people who ride without disc brakes are posting here, if you catch my drift.

Sixty Fiver

Lots of folks who refer to winter cycling don't understand winter.