I'm finally dusting off a hybrid frame I bought 4 years ago to build primarily for bike trail use but it will probably see a fair amount of gravel roads as well. My new bike trail of choice is a canal tow path that hasn't had a lot of maintenance so some stretches are a bit primitive. Lots of overgrowth, mud, sand, etc. and a couple times after riding through damp foot tall grass on the less traveled sections I noticed a little loss of braking with my V-brakes until I got them cleaned off. This has me thinking it's time for disc brakes but I want to stick with mechanical. I'm currently 230 Lbs. but working on knocking at least another 20 Lbs. off. Any recommendations as to brand, model, etc. would be appreciated. I'm not against mixing and matching brands if one brand of calipers is superior but another brand has better rotors. Although this is a budget build and I don't have a "sky's the limit" budget I'm willing to pay a little more for "decent" stuff. The frame is an older NOS Miele Toscana 200 I got off Ebay for $60 shipped (not high end but not a BSO either), fork is a RockShox XC30 (disc only), Vuelta Corsa XLC 29" wheelset and the derailleurs, trigger shifters, crankset, BB (Hollowtech) and cassette are Deore XT 3 X 9.

If you're absolutely set on mechanical, TRP Hy/Rd.

Have them stock on the bike, I like the BB7 Mountain, OK ... just better after changing the stock pads, to Kool Stop Organic..

were I to Throw money at them Pauls Clampers have made the manual pad wear adjustment easy , with big aluminum knobs..

seen a partial melt on BB7 on mountain bike's outer adjustment knobs in the LBS .. [Though All the small Avid parts are stocked by QBP].

Not Mine, Must have been a smoking hot disc descent.






...

I was looking at those, no major hills around here, largest altitude changes I would likely encounter would be 3 or 400 feet on a very long and gentle grade.

Sram/Avid BB7 Mtn, 160mm rotors. Parts are everywhere. If you need, you can later either upgrade to Icetech 160 ( some McGyvering required ) or move calipers and use IceTech180.
If you want to really splurge, TRP is da bomb.. to your wallet.

/ksywa

May I ask why cable brake?
You can get good Deore Brakes for $50 and even the cheaper $30 shimano hydraulic brakes should be much better than good mechanical ones.

As for rotor, I recommend 180 mm in front and 160 mm in rear. Gives good front bias and always good to have over-engineered brakes. Cools better, lasts longer, more power...

Also wondering why bother with cable pull on a new build with no lever issues, when Deore works fantastically and is inexpensive.

Right now, Im really liking the Shimano hydros from deore up. Deore and XT are the two sweet price points, with SLX being in an awkward middle ground and XTR is for racing. For cables, TRP are good and BB7s are a good choice if for some reason I had to run cable discs.

Much easier to fix on a road side.

Now wrt "much better" - it is a very subjective statement. Can yo substantiate it - what do you mean by "much better" ?

/ksywa

Because this was originally going to be a V-brake build and I already have NOS Deore XT 3 X 9 trigger shifters/brake levers for V-brakes plus I've ridden bikes with mechanical discs and they are more than adequate for my purposes. V-brakes would probably do just fine 99.9% of the time, they haven't failed me yet, I just thought I'd give discs a try since the frame has the mounts.

What do you have to fix on the road? Normal wear of pad and rotor you should regularly notice and replace at home (and that is also possible on the road for either type). Once air is out of the system, it doesn't get back in. If you use shimano with mineral oil, you don't worry about aging of fluid. And unless you severely under design your brake (i.e. using 140 mm rotor on a DH bike), fluid burn is very unlikely.

Someone could cut your hose, but that also could happen with a cable brake. Or if you keep it very dirty for 15 years and dirt gets into the fluid and over time gunks it up (I'd assume this is gradual degradation).

short of these more or less hypothetical problems, i don't see a need to fix them on the road. For cable brakes the cable could break, over stretch....

I don't see cars being less reliable since they went to hydraulic brakes 100 years ago.

I’ve had really good things to say about TRP Spykes, I’ve owned BB7s and I think the Spykes are much better, they’re easier to set up, adjusts and replace pads, plus the Spykes have dual “pistons” and the bite the rotor evenly.

Thanks for all the input, went with the TRP Spyre with a 180mm front rotor and 160mm rear. Still have a few small odds and ends to get but hope to have everything so I can put it together over Christmas shutdown.

Very good choice, I think TRP makes the best cable pull disc brake calipers. Make sure you pair those Spyres with a road type brake lever, a MTB type lever won’t work well with them.

Not a problem, been wanting to go with drop bars and brifters. Did it on an old MTB and have had in the back of my head to do it with this one.

Oh good, sounds like you have it all figured out. I've seen a few people using Spyres with MTB brake levers that didn't like the way they worked because they felt squishy. If you got brand new calipers the adjusters sometimes can be set with treadlocker and may take a lot of force to break loose. Mine were so tight I thought I was going to break my 3mm allen wrench.

Also have another option, Shimano ST-EF65-9 Shifters w/ 4 finger brake levers can be set for either V-brake/MTB discs or Canti/caliper brakes. I have the 3 X 7 and 3 X 8 versions on other bikes and really like them so I may run those on trekking bars to start out, otherwise I'd have to also change to a road front derailleur to work with the brifters. I already have the trekking bars sooo........