Get hydraulic brakes then routing not a problem.

I like mine,one finger operation

I agree it's a distraction and I understand that after it was cleared up. That said, I still maintain that in an endo, your front wheel doesn't actually lock with respect the fork, except possibly in a controlled stunt endo like those guys with bars coming out of their wheels do. Anyway, I get what you meant and agree that the detail doesn't really matter.

What kind of rims were you using? Apparently this wet braking thing is a bigger issue on carbon rims? I wouldn't know.

I think carbons are suppose to be pretty good or at least better than aluminum when wet, as long as you have the proper pads for carbon wheels.

All this carbon wheel stuff is a bit relevant because carbon wheels are really a pro feature where disc brakes are a commuter feature. If it turns out most of the improvements in discs apply to carbon wheels, and yet aren't needed in pro races, then maybe the problem is more easily solved by commuters not using race wheels? Of course the industry would rather sell you carbon rims and disc brakes than aluminum rims and rim brakes. I'm not saying there's no gain on aluminum rims either. There probably is some. For me I think I'd rather just ride a little slower in the rain when approaching anything.

Interestingly, the conditions where discs offer the best stopping advantage of rims---corners on very wet descents--are also the conditions where the tires are most likely to give way.

I find that on my road bike, using rim brakes, doing hard stops from top speed i can modulate the rear brake a little to keep it from locking up----or rather, feather it a little so it unlocks immediately after locking, a few times a sa rule ... but that is a panic stop from top speed.

I am not convinced that discs are going to be all that much more easy to modulate at high speed, fighting gravity ... In the Wet, when the braking limit is so low already. Maybe. i am not a road racer so I cannot say.

In the dry, rim brakes seem to be the equivalent of discs.

As for the person suggesting that the outer edge of the disc mushroom ... the problem is, the disc has to slide into a very narrow slot (between fixed and floating pad) for a wheel change. if the disc rim is thicker, there would need to be a quick-release mechanism, and discs seem to be pretty finicky to adjust as is, so a QR might be more complexity, more weight, more room for failure, and more cost ... for something which might not offer any advantage during UCI top-tier racing anyway.

A snap-off guard might be the best solution .... or maybe, after a bunch of tests, riders will find that disc brakes don't actually increase injuries during pile-ups.

I mean, I know a lot of people Assume that discs will gash the heck out of riders ... i wonder about it myself ... but so far there is Zero evidence of that.

This certainly seems to be true, but it's not quite fair to just say, well you're limited by tires anyway. I think the point is that discs don't need that initial delay for wiping water off the rims. Yes you'll be limited by traction, but at least you can start braking up to that traction limit sooner. If you're limited in braking power you don't want to also a add a delay. I'm just not sure how big a deal that delay really is on aluminum rims. I've never really noticed it being very significant. It's probably there though. It definitely seems like using carbon as a heat dissipation surface is not a brilliant engineering move. The wet thing is slightly less obvious.

But what do disc brakes weigh? How does it compare to carbon vs aluminum rims? Rotational weight vs non rotational is really perfectly irrelevant for anyone who doesn't race and particularly, race crits (not because you don't care about the tiny extra fraction of a second, but because except during acceleration, the difference doesn't save you any fraction of a second, and during non-braking deceleration it even gains you back that time/energy)

The point is maybe you can get heavier aluminum rims and then rim brakes really perform almost the same as disc brakes in all conditions then? And the total weight difference might be close to nothing? (I don't have numbers). Only thing lost is a shift from non-rotational (and/or small radius at least) weight to rotational weight and a gain of simplicity. If you really do race crits, you'll probably sacrifice the braking power and save weight both places anyway.

Sorry, I missed that. Interesting. Everything I can find on the issue says carbon is definitely worse in the wet. Maybe that's changed very recently or it's just myth? I have no direct experience to say.

Here's an example testimony:
https://forums.roadbikereview.com/whe...ty-272019.html

See post #6

he does contradict me in that apparently braking is more important than weight to him during racing, and he only would use carbon for TT.

Did you watch the video I posted on post #47 ? The GNC guys seem to think their carbon wheels brake pretty well in the wet weather.

Do they borrow technology from air guitars?

Ben

It's all anecdotes to me. I did watch the video though and they complained that the carbon-rim brakes had a delayed and unpredictable onset, edit: when wet (relative to the disc brakes at least). Other accounts on the net corroborate this and go farther to say that's true relative to aluminum too, but I'm not going to claim I know.

oh, it's also funny about that guy only wanting carbon for tt.. since in a tt, at a least a typical flat one, weight of any kind is nearly irrelevant after the start, and the rotational vs frame weight even more so. The only thing that matters for TT is aerodynamics. I guess it's easier to form aero shapes out of carbon though? Slightly tangential, but the thread is about evolution and evolution of all these choices is related. It's worth stepping back and seeing if problems are being solved that didn't need to exist.

Still hasn't all of this been tested with MTBing? I have rim brakes and with all of the spare wheels I have it is hard to justify getting a road bike with disks. However my MTB sure seems to work better than my rim brakes did on my old MTB.

The only real question would seem to be are disks necessary on a road racing bike and do they pose a risk to other riders? Why one has to ask are they safe for Cycle cross and MTB racing. As far as weight goes there is no reason a bike can't make weight with disks considering some have to add weight now to make the minimum.

In the dirt they do work better. When my brakes have been wet the Disks work better, it seems to me anyway. Should racers use them? I don't know that would be up to the teams and riders but I am not sure mixing brake types are a good idea.

You're mixing issues. Bikes are below weight for a reason, and the weight limit has a reason too and this eats into both of those and puts feedback pressure on both of those, but gaming a system is a different thing from what is fundamentally better (allows you to ride faster, where crashing counts as much slower, possibly permanently). As for gaming the system, if some configuration clearly has advantage relative to the rules, then everyone will use it, and it won't be an advantage to anyone. A brake is as much a performance device as a safety device. A bike without brakes is perfectly safe for me, because I won't ride it over 5mph, with my feet dragging the ground at that. So, my brain is the safety device. The brake is what let's me go fast.

This is only one scenario and while it's the most relevant for pro racing, it's also just one of the many possibilities for the average non pro rider. Rim brakes can lose all braking power in certain conditions. If the brake tract freezes with underchilled water for example it means that the brake onset delay is several seconds and while that is happening the bike has zero braking power. It's happened to me more than once and it's not a fun situation. Then there's the whole wearing down a structural component part. If one rides in the sunny California it's not nearly as bad as someplace where the ground composition is gravel sandy but there's also moderate to high rain. I've managed to get noticeable wear on a rim in just a few gravel rides.

Other advantages I see and have experienced with discs are

1) Easier and better braking.
The endo limit was discussed earlier. It's a valid argument in a way. However one can endo with a spoon brake with enough grip strength, and a spoon brake doesn't wear down a structural component of the bicycle. Still spoon brakes haven't been used in probably a hunder years as better brake tech appeared, which made braking easier, made it require less effort and allowed for more modulation. I'm talking about rim brakes of course. Rim brakes have advanced of course, but to me the disc brake is an even bigger advancement to rim brakes as it allows for more accurate braking, requires less effort and less strength. Probably the most powerful stoppers I've ever tried have been Vee brakes with really long arms, but they are not at all accurate as the modulation curve is extremely steep and the brakes are very grabby. The road rim brakes I've tried are then the opposite as the low end braking is accurate but it starts requiring a lot of strength to get the full braking power, so one could say the modulation curve is very shallow. In the disc brakes I have the modulation curve is usually very predictable and wide so there's a lot of room for accurate braking but the power increases with very little effort. My mech discs have a fairly long lever travel which is what I prefer as it allows for more accuracy.

2) Allows for better combining of different sized tires, fenders, or even wheel sizes. With disc brakes a 700c bike with slightly narrow tires can be easily converted to 650b with much larger tires.

3) Better lever compatability. One can quite easily disagree with this but at least to me it's easier to deal with disc brakes as a disc frame allows for the use of both long pull and short pull disc calipers as well as hydraulics. One is not as limited in terms of levers as any lever can use a disc brake. However with rim brake frames if you have canti studs you are really limited to either the worst brake on the market now (canti) or you must get used to a massive amount of fiddling (mini vee).

4) discs don't wear down a structural component. Of course those who have never seen a rim wear down don't really appreciate this but where I live it happens quite frequently.

To me they are just overall a much better system in every possible way.

What a joke that vid is.

Try the comparo again with aluminum rims rather than carbon and I bet braking distances equal out.

Their OPINION is irrelevant. Only the facts matter.

It's well established that aluminum rims are a far better braking surface.

https://forums.roadbikereview.com/whe...ty-272019.html

Always?

If I had a CHOICE, I would choose thumb shifters over trigger shifters any day of the week on an mtb. Guess what? We were not given a choice. Thumb shifters are lighter, and give you a choice of friction vs indexing. The light weight, versatility and brilliant functionality make them clearly superior, but the manufacturers forced trigger shifters down our throats so here we are.

Some CHANGES in tech suck, others are absolutely fantastic. Let's take examples one by one; blanket generalizations are just dumb.

Ughhhh ..... people please,. This whole discussion is about ONE THING: disc brakes in the UCI peloton.

We all admit (if we are honest) that discs have advantages that can outweigh the drawbacks for many other applications. The whole "disc issue" is whether or not disc brakes present Safety Issues in the UCI WorldTour peloton.

elcruxio, your post is wonderfully reasoned and clearly written ... but entirely off the mark. it is settled territory. Discs can be a better system in a lot of applications.
But NOT in "every possible way." With the current level of disc brake technology, they are NOT an improvement over rim brakes in the Pro peloton. Wheel changes are harder; the neutral service vehuivle might have to carry a lot of extra wheels because not every manufacturer uses an identical system. It is not demonstrated that, in Pro racing conditions, that discs offer any measurable increase in performance to justify greater, weight, drag, and complexity.

And the big issue of contention: riders fear that exposed discs will increase injuries in pile-ups. That has yet to be explored in the real world.

None of this has anything to do with any kind of riding outside of the peloton in a UCI-sanctioned road race where top-level pros are pushing the limit of themselves and every component on the bike.

This would be a very short thread if it was actually about what it si actually about.

Thing is, sometimes that five feet--or ONE foot--Is the difference between a close call, and severe injury or death.

Happens I have a story regarding this very thing: bombing down a steep hill, some ******* decided to U-turn, with no signal, right in front of me. Say less than 50'. With my disc brakes, I was able to feather the brakes right at the point before they locked. My tires were *literally* squealing. I stopped so close that I had to turn my front wheel to the right so as not to hit it against the side of his car. I was close enough to reach out and pound on his roof with my fist as I yelled curses at him. ONE foot--That little initial second it takes the rim brakes on my other bike to grab--would have resulted in me hitting his car and flying over, and being very badly injured. This one experience convinced me of the complete superiority of disc brakes--between the stopping power and the fast response and ability to finely modulate the deceleration.

Carbon is way worse than aluminum in the wet. You get used to it tho, and start applying brakes sooner than later. That first time is always a bit nerve racking tho, like when the light turns red and you just keep rolling towards the intersection.

Low mileage, flat land, fair weather cyclist?

Here in the northwest, riding daily one can go through a set of pads in 6 weeks, and a rim in a year.

I ride in the rain, ride in the cold, hit up gravel, climb/descend mountains and so forth. I've gone through two rims in about 2.5 years of cycling. One was $30 to replace and one was $90. Part of the many reasons I don't imagine I'll ever go back to rim brakes on new production bicycle purchases.

For pro-cyclists this is probably the best take I've seen re:discs in the peloton: California Streaming - Do U even Marx, bro?: The disc brake debate as labor issue

That article is a bunch of .... stuff. if the riders want to organize, they should. If they are unwilling to organize, that's on them.

The article assumes the wound came from a disc and that "fact" is being covered up, but doesn't explain how the wrong knee was cut, if Ventoso just brushed by a rider---the brake disc would have been on the other side. The article also doesn't mention that the second alleged disc-caused injury happened when there were no disc-brake-equipped bikes around.

Seems to me everyone i s lying and exaggerating to promote an agenda here ... and then blaming everyone else for doing it.

We all know the manufacturers are pushing discs to expand disc sales on their commercial bikes. That's understood. What is not understood, is if there is any increased risk associated with using disc brakes. Sorry, but the only way to test that is to put them on the bikes and ride.

if the riders seriously think that it would do more harm to their careers to lose a season recovering from a brake disc gash than to organize a protest ... they can do so.

I am definitely Not a Marxist, but I feel strongly about workers' rights ... to the point that I organized a successful action which got working bathrooms in a factory where I was employed ... which might well have led to my subsequent firing on a trumped up charge. But ... I took the risk because I believed in what I was doing.

If the riders in the pro peloton do not feel that strongly, or if not that many of them do ... that doesn't mean they have no rights. it is that they choose to exercise their right to work instead of their right to protest. Maybe not all of them are convinced that discs are deadly? Maybe some of them want to actually have facts in hand before risking their careers?

The riders have a huge amount of power. If they decided not to ride a stage, just one stage, of a Grand Tour for some specific reason, everyone would know about it immediately. Any action taken against those riders immediately would be noticed and reported ... and if their cause was just, it would hurt UCI a Lot.

Thing is, generally it is better to keep a clam dialogue in labor relations as in all kind of negotiations. Maybe the riders, thinking calmly, don't see a need to take strong action just yet.

Also, look at some of the reaction here. A lot of people say that discs aren't necessarily dangerous, and this is reactionary denial, people saying "Why change the old ways? They were always good enough," while we all also want progress.

You want so me conspiracy theory? Ventoso was hired by the manufacturers to make false claims about every injury which happened in the race, to Discredit the idea that discs are dangerous. They got to him.

Since this is the Internet, obviously people aren't willing to wait and see what the actual results of the next test weill be.

It should be noted that as far as anyone can tell for sure, the first test of discs cause Zero added injury. Even Ventoso said he didn't notice getting cut ... so he really doesn't know how it happened.