fietsbob

Adopted a Mix of TRP Hy Rd , caliper internally hydraulic, but cable operated,
and adjustable MA Avid Speed dial levers .. on my 20" wheel touring/rain bike ..
all seems good, so far.. in the North Wet..

406 - 47...





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Deal4Fuji

I recommend the Binford 5000 series rim brakes....grraawrraallll

chrisx

Post 37 says post 43 is wrong, hmm.



Discs come in various sizes, 165, 180, 203, etc. The bigger disc has more stopping power, a lot more.
My hands get fatigued when grabbing the cantis hard for a long time, not a problem with disc brakes.

unlike the videos and charts, touring bikes are piled high with many additional kilograms, and need better brakes.

djb

too many various factors involved to have a proper scientific method answer for ya.

djb

mr fuji

very cute photo

mstateglfr 

I now have a hardtail with properly set up hydraulic brakes.

meh- it stops me like my old vbrake mtb did. The modulation benefit exists, but I don't really care much about it. Meh.

can't say I now want to run out and switch my touring bikes and gravel bike to disc.

elcruxio

Just out of curiosity, what specs do you have on the brakes? Make, model, rotor size, pad make and model and how did you break them in?

jefnvk

Eh, I have the Spyres, they aren't any better or worse than a set of V brakes with Kool Stops.

There is a WIDE variety of disc brakes out there, that I don't think one can definitively say they are better. My wife bought a bike with them right before we went to France, and I can't believe how atrocious they were, even after being adjusted a couple times by two different shops after I couldn't get them into any decent shape. The bike would have been far better off equipped with V-brakes, especially at the price point it sold at.

alan s 

cyccommute 

jefnvk

I had to go back and look it up, she has Tektro Miras. Absolute junk. She's torn between trying to buy a nicer set of calipers to install, or just getting rid of the bike.

My hydros are Shimano M396, which I think are Acera level. They're great, I wouldn't mind if every bike I owned had them, a large step above my Spyres in quality and feel. My mechanical Spyres are just so-so, nothing special, take-em-or-leave-em type deal. They work, but I don't think they give me anything over my rim brake. Those Tektros, I'd have never bought a bike with them. Wide variety indeed, it is important to remember.

cyccommute 

alan s 

jefnvk

100% agree with you on the lack of understanding on "modulation", as a guy who actually develops automotive brake systems. My hydros are pretty good, but my one complaint is there is a bit of a jump from about 90% to full lock that doesn't modulate whatsoever.

I've never tried a set of nice cantis, but even the old Aceras I had originally on the Scott weren't bad. I think I stated earlier in this thread my best stopping bike (same Scott) is now wearing two sets of $3 Tektro OEM take off V Brakes that I tossed on as a place holder until I bought something nicer (after accidentally buying V-Brake levers), then never bothered to buy something nicer because there was no need.

fietsbob

I got in a lot of bike tours, over a couple decades, on bikes with cantilever brakes ,

in a time when all the bicycle disc brakes

were not available , Phil Wood had some for custom tandems .. Or crude ones from Asia..

My 04 Koga World tour Trekking bike Came with Magura's Hydraulic Rim brakes ...

they work superbly.. mounted on V brake posts..





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Tourist in MSN

I recalled reading somewhere that semi-metalic pads lasted longer but performed slightly worse than resin pads on disc brakes. I was unhappy with my Spyres, they did not perform as well as my V brakes and Koolstop Salmon pads. So, I decided to try some really cheap (so cheap they lacked a brand name) resin pads instead on my Spyres. The first time I tried them before running them in (repeated speed up and slow down braking as per instructions), they were as good as the semi-metalic OEM pads that came with the Spyre after I had run in the Spyre OEM pads. After I ran in the resin pads, the resin pads were clearly an improvement over the OEM pads.

I did not know if the rotor that I used with the semi-metalics would do anything to my experiment, but a bike charity in town had a used but nearly new TRP rotor in their bin for $6 so I bought that. Gave it a thorough cleaning with soap and water, and then another cleaning with rubbing alcohol when I switched to the resin pads, thus it was essentially a new rotor.

You might try some cheap resin pads on your Spyres, then keep the old pads as spares to carry on a tour since the resin pads might wear faster.

jefnvk

I've actually got a set of new organic pads I need to put on, just haven't ridden that bike much since I got back from France and haven't gotten around to it.

disctrucker

After several years of touring and having completed three-MTB tours I'll toss my vote on the disc brake side, but mechanical/cable disc brakes. They are simple to repair or replace. Even a rim out of true you'll still have useful brakes. Rims won't overheat on a long downhill and blowout a tube.

In the real world K.I.S.S. makes your life easier and gives you more time to enjoy fresh baked goods, ice cream and beer.

Safe travels,

Tourist in MSN

On a completely different topic, if your bike mounts the rear disc brake unit on the seatstay (which is common) instead of on the chainstay (less common), some racks do not attach properly to the frame because the disc unit might be in the way. If you decide you want discs and buy such a bike, make sure your rack will fit before you order it if you order it on line.

mstateglfr 

shimano mt500.
180mm front and 160 rear.

I broke them in by using them while making sure they were set up, and then riding.
Pretty straightforward. They work fine, but are hardly the revelation some claim.

oh, I set up some shimano m355 hydraulic brakes on an mtb for one of my kids- same thing. They work fine and stop her just as well as vbrakes. She is in 6th grade...not a lot is required to get her to stop.

elcruxio

There are pretty big differences between calipers and other components.

The best pad I've tried so far is the EBC Gold. Blows every other pad right out of the water. And they're pretty heat resistant too.

The best mechanical I've tried is the Hayes CX pro followed closely by Avid BB7 road. The worst surprisingly is the Tektro Spyre which was a massive hassle to mount and even after I got it to work it was pretty meh compared to the BB7.

Best hydro brake was magura gustav and a close second is whatever brake my brother has in his Kona Unit. It's Sram but no idea which one. All the Shimanos I've tried have been ok but lack any kind of ability to handle cold weather and they're not the best of the best.

Housings also make a difference. You get slightly better performance from compressionless housings.

One things clear though. All discs I have tried have been overall better than any of the disc brakes I've tried. But I'm thrifty so I hate replacing rims due to brake wear. That may bias my point a bit, but it's still an issue that depending on the locale one rides in rims can go pretty quickly.

Edikz

cyccommute 

I would have no problem whatsoever. All of my mountain bikes have a 203mm rotor in the front. One of my mountain bikes has a 203mm rotor in the front and linear brakes in the back (Paul Motolite but it has had Avid v-brakes in the past). My touring bike has cantilevers which has been used as a loaded touring bike all over the country in all kinds of weather...including at least one 45mph downhill off New Found Gap in a driving rain storm. At no point did I feel that the brakes were going to send me off a cliff.

And, being an old fart, I've used cantilevers on many of the trails that kids now days insist have to have disc to survive. It ain't the brake that's important but how you use it. They all have the same limitation of stopping power according to physics.

djb

more comments from another old fart

yes, a good disc setup means great stopping power with less finger pressure compared to rim brakes, and my experience with BB7s show stronger stopping power with less finger pressure

but as cycco says, every braking system has limits, and before there were disc setups, we all toured on rim braked bikes, and just as with any car, or motorcycle, or driving in snow or whatever, one adjusts our braking distances and reaction time to the conditions.
We all toured in mountains fully loaded, or mountain biked down trails, and you instinctively knew when to brake and how your braking system worked for diff conditions.

just to go back to the idea that one can actually not die using rim systems, keep pads and rims clean, properly adjusted, and if you know how to brake properly and use the front brake properly, they work. I ride in traffic every day with rim systems, in rain or even snow, and using common sense and observation, my bikes allow me to stop.

cyccommute 

That has been my experience as well. I have discs because the bikes I have require them. But it's not like I couldn't ride the same trails with bikes that have rim brakes. I have ridden the same trails with rim brakes and didn't notice any difference.

Frankly, I chalk a lot of the "disc brakes are so much better" to the way that they are set up. Most people's experience with rim brakes are with them set up to engage at about 1/2 lever pull. That makes for a very mushy brake. All of my brakes...disc or rim... have been set up so that the pads engage with minimal lever pull. By the time I hit 1/2 lever pull, the brakes are locked or almost locked. Add that to active body language during braking...moving down and back while braking...and just about any brake will stop my rather large self on a dime with 8¢ change.