Seattle Forrest

Ok, I looked it up, disc brakes add at least 75 pounds to your bike.

DrIsotope

And if you're an adult of even remotely "average" size, the bag of meat that activates the brakes adds at least 125lbs to the bike. Usually way more. I mean, in my case my disc brakes could add as much as 0.5% of my body weight.

kbarch

Valid question. I don't feel THAT sorry for them. I also kind of feel sorry for the little kids I see whose parents make them wear helmets, knee and elbow pads just to ride a scooter or push bike. But what are you going to do? As for charity, well, seems to me it's the folks who spend extra for disc brakes, like the kids whose parents shower them with gear, who have the financial resources to spare.

Campag4life

Intolerance of others is a bigger scourge than any difference in thinking which makes the world go around as we witnessed in the disk brake thread.

For example, we may agree that disk brakes have less advantage compared to disadvantage on a road bike, but I don't feel sorry for those that prefer disk brakes in the least. In certain conditions, disk brakes work better. If you deny this, you haven't ridden them much IMO. I feel sorry for those that don't have enough money to buy any kind of decent bicycle however.

And we further disagree about making little Johnny wear a helmet. No I didn't grow up wearing a helmet, but helmets based upon personal experience save lives....even if riding a push scooter or a skateboard or rollerblading you didn't mention. So I encourage helmet use when in motion. Paradigms evolve sometimes for the good and helmet usage is one. Even with a helmet, head collisions can still cause brain damage. This is evidenced in football and will likely be sweeping changes to that sport as well. I would never let a child play football with what is known today either...and many pro football players feel the same way about their children.

joejack951

Calling what you don't seem to understand 'drivel' doesn't make it not so. You can try some simple experiments to prove the above to yourself, if you really care. Start by making a small box that weighs about a few pounds. Try to push it on a surface. Now make the box 10-20 times bigger in surface area contacting the floor but still weighing about the same. Is it 10-20 times harder to push? What you propose says that it should be.

Not dual compounds but I have run linear pull brake pads on caliper brakes. I have also used a very wide variety of bicycle brakes over the past 20 years of riding regularly, ranging from very low to end to some of the best.

Whatever you call it, you seem to be proposing that you are so much smarter than Shimano, Campagnolo, SRAM, Cane Creek, Tektro, etc. all of whom equip their road calipers with normal size pads. If only they just made the pads bigger...Or not. Perhaps they've done a little more work on the problem and have a slightly better background of knowledge on the topic. I know it's hard to imagine

A new expert has been born! I'm sure the offers from the big three will be pouring in any day now so that they can roll out the next game-changer in brake tech on their new groups: bigger pads.

They either work as proposed or they are a scam. They can't be both. If you think wiping down rims after a ride solves any of the issues that discs solve, you are sadly mistaken.


This takes the cake and needs no further response

joejack951

You are neglecting the weight of the rotors, I think (roughly 200 grams for good ones in typical road sizes, 160/140). But the end result is still not 2 lbs.

joejack951

It's all a front in my case. I take Paypal.

kbarch

Nothing to be gained by addressing all the ways you have mistaken my meaning, but I have to highlight this gem of yours, which I hope I am misreading - or do you in fact encourage people to put on a helmet as soon as they get out of bed?

Now, I used to be a motorcyclist and was pretty much an ATGATT kind of guy, so I get your point, to a point. But it seems to me the key is not how we are moving, but rather how much control we have.

Seattle Forrest

They're not part of the group set?

DrIsotope

If we're only looking at the top-of-the-line,

DuraAce 9150 Di2 rim brake, total group weight 2051g
DuraAce 9170 Di2 hydro disc brake, total group weight 2389g

DuraAce 9100 mech rim brake, total group weight, 2097g
DuraAce 9120 mech disc brake, total group weight, 2445g

So for us Americans, that's 11.9oz weight penalty for the Di2, and 12.3oz for the mechanical. Add the rotors (which are not included in groupset weight) and you're there at the pound typically mentioned... but that's a pound added to DuraAce 9100 components, which are getting near as light as it gets. Many of us could go to the 9120 and our bikes would get lighter.

Campag4life

Yeah...what I meant. Everybody should put on a helmet as they get out of bed. A sad perversion of what I wrote.


How much control we have? You mean when the dog comes out of nowhere and gets caught under the front wheel and we endo? We have no control is the whole point behind wearing helmets. If accident avoidance was predictable, we wouldn't need them.


I too 'was' a ATGATT motorcyclist who quit riding because I saw too much carnage on the road...moronic driver pull outs basically. Saw one just the other day and the guy laid his bike down trying to avoid the collision and slid under the small truck, got stuck, caught on fire and burnt to death.


We have little control is the point. Helmets help but I have lost friends who had helmets on as well including on a bicycle where they didn't save them.

topslop1

So you're telling me I should get discs right?

merlinextraligh

Adding up component weights doesn't always end up squaring with actual weights of the assembled bikes.


There are a couple of things you're leaving out. The ENVE weights don't include the thru axle. Also, the frame weight is just the frame, not a frameset, so it doesn't include the fork.


When you look at published weights of actual bikes the difference is greater than your math suggests.


For example a Trek Emonda SLR8 disc weighs 15.26 pounds, and the SLR rim 13.73, more than a pound and a half.


While the weight difference is closing a bit, it's still more than a pound. Rather than ignoring that, the better question is whether it matters, and whether there's enough advantage to offset it.

merlinextraligh

Plus most disc frames are a bit heavier (although I have to admit the R5 is surprising in that regard) disc forks are heavier. Thru axles are heavier than QR's. And you really should build disc wheels with higher spoke count than wheels for rim brakes.


Thus my point is that it's more instructive to look at the actual weights of actual bikes.

Maelochs

Discs weigh more and in certain situations stop better.

The Earth is Not flat.

Thirteen disc brake threads, and three pages here, and people are still trying to debate the facts as obvious as whether the sun is up during the daytime.

"Hi---What's this thread about?"

it's about people who are done making up their minds and bored, so they are trying to make up other people's minds as well.

joejack951

Show me some QR's that are lighter than 70 grams for the pair that work as well as my flush thru axles.

joejack951

They tend to be sold separately so I was under the impression that they were not included. Perhaps I am wrong in that regard.

speshelite

I call your posts drivel because that's exactly what they are.

In the meantime, I suggest you find a dictionary and look up the words "clamp" and "slide." Believe it or not, there is a difference. :-)

I didn't make any such proposal. This is a false assertion you have pulled out of your anus as a strawman. If you had actually read my posts, you would know that the calipers in question are manufactured by a shadowy company called "axis," not shimano, campy, sram, cane creek or tektro. My claims are limited to claims about this particular model from one particular brand, although I do acknowledge the possibility that a linear pull pad could very well improve performance on a name brand model.

Furthermore, everyone knows that tektro calipers are of poor quality. I've ridden plenty of models of tektro's and have never ever been favorably impressed. They flat out suck and everyone knows it.

I know it's tough for you to wrap your rather small brain around, but component manufacturers are not staffed by gods. They are average people making average or even below average wages. They have produced such oddities as down tube shifters, cogs without hyperglide ramps, chainrings without superglide ramps, hydraulic brakes that fail and must be recalled, biopace chainrings, single pivot calipers, brake levers made of plastic, resin pedals, etc etc etc etc etc.

Cheap, heavily compromised components are the norm for the bicycling industry, even among the major players.

Bicycles, you see, occupy an odd grey area somewhere between transportation and kid's toys, and the level of engineering reflects the limited budgets, middling or below average engineering skills, and total lack of regulation bicycle component manufacturers face.

If you are a top engineering graduate at MIT, Caltech, Berkeley or Stanford, where do you want to work? At NASA or at SRAM?

"Engineers" or product designers at the bicycle component companies are poorly paid bike geeks who quite frankly cannot compete on the job market elsewhere.

What do you think Chris Chance did when he dropped out of bicycle manufacturing? Did he go for work for BMW or Porsche to help design carreras? No, he became a friggin' reiki "healer!"

The engineering skills of the employees at campy, sram, etc are mediocre at best. Disc brakes are not exactly a new groundbreaking technology designed specifically for bicycles. They are an established technology; yes, it does take some effort to develop lighter parts for bicycles, and it does take time for product proliferation and amortization to bring costs down, but these are issues of refinement and patient marketing, they don't involve extraordinary creativity or intelligence. The tech is already there, waiting to be applied to a new range of products, in this case mtn and road bicycles.

Again, your reading comprehension skills are at a kindergarten level or below. There is no "big three" in cycling componentry first of all. There is shimano and there is everyone else.

2nd, "axis" is not part of the big three. As a matter of fact, no one knows who produces "axis" brakes because specialized isn't saying. How's that for accountability?!?

"Axis" brakes are inferior products. You can find posts everywhere on the net documenting this problem.

And you are right, either axis brakes work or they are a scam. It is the latter. The brakes are in fact a scam. They don't work. At least you got that much right. :-)

3rd, wiping down rims and pads doesn't "solve" any of the problems discs "solve." If you have not figured this out already, and apparently you haven't, there was no problem to "solve." Both rim and disc brakes stop in the wet! The only documented figures we have of an alleged disparity in stopping distances is from GCN. They claim a 3 to 10 meter disparity. HOWEVER, as I have pointed out several times, this is because GCN used carbon rather than alu rims. I estimate the disparity would be halved with alu rims alone.

Use shimano calipers, and the disparity decreases further. Use linear pull pads and I would not be surprised if the gap were completely closed.

As I said earlier, no one will actually conduct such tests since it will expose the fact that discs offer at best a negligible advantage.

speshelite

You don't say. :-)

As I have pointed out previously, disc brake bikes weigh over a pound more than than their rim brake counterparts.

speshelite

There is no conclusive evidence of such. The only documented comparison on record was conducted by GCN. And it wasn't even a valid comparison. They use:

a) crabon rather than alu rims for the rim brake test

b) sram red calipers rather than shimano dura ace or ultegra which are considered to be better brakes

Correct both problems and it is likely that the disparity in wet weather is reduced substantially.

With a simple hack such as installing linear pull pads, I bet the advantage is either negligible or zero.

Campag4life

Are you an engineer? I am and won't tell you my background. But you are dead wrong about the disciplines and skills required to design all the different facets of a bicycle. In virtually all industries the disciplines are the same. Copious computer modeling, FEA and testing. I have worked with engineers from many of the top engineering schools in America and Europe. You paint with much too broad a brush. I have known engineers that went to small schools who had way more talent and creativity than those that have gone to MIT. Also portends to how many degrees an engineer has. Some engineers with just an undergraduate degree can be way more prolific than engineers with PhD's who were basically stilted and hyper focused without a broad comprehension of how to design a product...or even how many patents they created.


If you knew more about the subject you would understand there are many examples of creative genius without an engineering, physics or math degree. The creative genius Soichiro Honda, the founder of Honda is called as an engineer when he didn't have any engineering degree for example. He is a Japanese Henry Ford.


So sorry if I take exception to what you wrote but we do share agreement about Axis brakes. They do suck, but they are primitive and mostly a function of bean counters extracting profit. Reverse engineering aka copying other good designs...there is very little invention in any industry....isn't difficult for a graduate engineer. Plenty of great caliper brake designs to benchmark off of.

redlude97

Zipp - Speed Weaponry | Accessories | Accessories | Ti black aero skewers

DrIsotope

An external-cam Ti skewer isn't even in the same league (strength-wise) as a typical thru axle. We're talking about the strength of a 5mm solid rod compared to a 12 or 15mm tube. For strength and clamping force, nothing beats a thru axle.

If you can't fit thru axle, ignore the weight and go straight to Shimano closed cam, or DT Swiss RWS if you're feeling fancy.

redlude97

The only thing a skewer needs to do is hold the wheel in. If a skewer does this reliably then it works. On a caliper brake bike there is no force pulling the skewer out. Zipp skewers work fine for this, pro teams use them. He asked for a lighter skewer that works as well. It works just as well

joejack951

What does a braked rim do between two brake pads while the bike is moving? It slides, with friction. Whether applied by two brake arms or applied by the weight of the object there is a force being applied to surface creating friction. We can get into the details and how my experiment does and does not compare to a braking even but so far you have shown no indication that you understand what is going on so I'm not sure it's worth my effort.

Explaining how your larger brake pads generate more braking force than a smaller version of the same thing would be a great start. I'll leave that ball in your court.

You've essentially said that your 'crap' Axis brake with new pads are equivalent to hydro disc brakes. It is a basic logical jump to assert that you are also then claiming that your Axis brakes with new pads are better than ANY caliper brake on the market as most accept that hydro disc brakes are as good as it gets. Care to explain how you are not asserting just that?

The last statement sums up your ignorance of the product design field. Chris Chance built bikes. That is a far cry from being an actual product designer. He is closer to an artisan than an engineer. And most engineers do not go on to be product designers, a field which is a very tiny subset of mechanical engineering (and industrial design).

I won't speak for the engineers at any of those companies but I do know that producing something that performs at the level of say a 105 groupset for the money that it costs takes a considerable investment in engineering. Whether you appreciate that or not is an illustration of your understanding of the field of product design. And it's ok to not understand, but showcasing your blatant ignorance of it isn't a flattering way to present yourself.

I have no idea what you are trying to say with the above. You are jumping all over the place. You then conclude that discs offer a negligible advantage over Shimano calipers and big brake pads (a comparison you claim to have not made above, by the way). Once again, you appear to not understand the benefits of discs.