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Disc Brakes Took over the Cycling World. Here's Why That Was a Mistake

20 points by mareko 3y ago

pdoege 3y ago
I used to do fast descents of Bonny Doon and similar. Think 60Mph / 100kmhr at the base. With my fat butt and damp brakes I would run through the stop signs at the bottom using rim brakes. I’ll never go back to rim brakes now that I’ve had discs. I still use my rim brake bikes for clear weather around town. For real work it is discs every single time. The author seems to have only used bicycles in optimal conditions.
- yborg 3y ago
  I'm old and back in the day all we had were caliper brakes on road bikes and I rode two centuries in the rain in a paceline and somehow we all survived, as did all those decades of Tour de France riders. Maybe guys can only do "real work" with disc brakes now, but at least in the past riders managed with rim brakes outside of optimal conditions. Maybe excessive smartphone usage is compromising grip strength these days...
  - hasmolo 3y ago
    did you feel attacked by the OP in some way?
  - MrStonedOne 3y ago
    [dead]
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
diziet_sma 3y ago
> Nobody Asked For Them After riding a mountain bike with disk brakes, I couldn't wait to get a road bike with disk brakes. > Then Why Did We Get Them? Because they're better. Full stop. I can stop faster with less effort. > Rim Brakes Are Better For Most Riders Most Of The Time I don't need any brakes at all most of the time either, but when I need them I really need them.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- wg0 3y ago
  Basically - disc brakes are mostly install and forget. Take very minimal force to apply. Changing pads is trivial. And not to mention how much effortless it is to apply the brakes compared to cable brakes where there's friction within the cable hose. I can't go back to cable brakes after using disc brakes. Even for normal grocery trips. Nothing recreational.
davidw 3y ago
This seems a bit extreme. My take: * Mountain bikes are better with them. I hate the low tolerances in terms of adjusting the damn things though. * I guess they're better with carbon rims on road bikes? * But the 'limiting factor' in stopping a road bike in most cases is the road/tire contact patch, not the brakes. I can lock up a road bike just fine with caliper brakes.
- threeseed 3y ago
  > they're better with carbon rims on road bikes Carbon rims are becoming more popular across cycling not just on road. They are stronger, lighter, less fragile and the quality is improving such that I bought a pair with a lifetime warranty. And carbon rims are worse than aluminium with calliper brakes especially in wet weather conditions.
  - davidw 3y ago
    I have carbon rims on my MTB, and I think disk brakes there generally seem like a decent idea. The rims are more exposed to mud and muck, and the added stopping power is nice. I'm less convinced about road bikes though.
- trentnix 3y ago
  Carbon rims (prior to 2016 or so) were notorious for offering a poor braking experience and you ran the risk of overheating the brake surface on big descents and potentially delaminating the carbon rim. Better wheels and pads were manufactured, resulting in a much better experience when riding on higher quality wheels. No mistake, disc brakes offer better braking power and a superior braking experience to rim brakes but the difference is nowhere as big as it used to be.
prhn 3y ago
If you're not an avid cyclist please take this article with a grain of salt. It's largely understood that disc brakes are better, full stop. A few guys in my cycling group who are still on rim brakes will not take the really fun descents, even when it's completely dry. They don't trust them. Pad fade, overheating brake surfaces causing de-lamination and popping inner tubes. So, sure, if all you're ever going to do is ride on a flat surface in dry conditions rim brakes are fine, but not better. It's arguable rim brakes are slightly more aero. I like my bones unbroken, so I'll take the penalty. I also find servicing hydraulic disc brakes to be more intuitive. Having to fiddle with the tension of rim brakes' mechanical cables to get them just right was always much more cumbersome to me.
- uoaei 3y ago
  Interesting you prefer hydraulic specifically, even the disc brake zealots mostly agree mechanical is more reliable and easier to maintain.
  - jhot 3y ago
    I'm with the op, once you get used to servicing hydraulic I find them easier in many regards and require less frequent adjusting. Sure if you get a leak on trail you're screwed, but that has happened to one bike one time in my riding group over the last 10+ years. I will be happy to have a cable-free bike someday.
    - nikau 3y ago
      > once you get used to servicing hydraulic In my experience with over 40,000km on Shimano hydraulics, the only servicing is swapping pads when the pad wear spring starts screeching against the rotor. My early 2000 era Magura hyrdros were a bit shit and required a lot of maintenance and issues with sticking callipers, but shimanos made in the last 15 years are pretty much perfected and maintenance free.
  - dc3k 3y ago
    This is absolutely the opposite of my experience and the experience of anybody I've ever met who has actually ridden a bicycle before.
imperialdrive 3y ago
Uhhh yeah, do yourself a favor, pay no attention to this article. Always buy hydraulic disc brakes whenever possible. The rest of the bike can be whatever, but when it comes to stopping power, you will smile endlessly from the smooth yet responsive safety hydraulic disc brakes provide. They are inexpensive and easy to replace, and need much less maintenance to adjust. Every single time you brake, at all, you will be thankful. The only thing close to as important IMHO is good lights.
- JohnFen 3y ago
  I love my disc brakes, but I don't like the hydraulic aspect of them. I do wish that they used cables, instead. Those are easier for me to maintain/repair. I only use my bike to commute, though, and I don't think that there's a real difference in performance between hydraulic and cable with that use case so it's all about ease of maintenance for me.
  - sleepybrett 3y ago
    They make cable disc breaks and cable actuated hydraulic disc breaks as well.
    - JohnFen 3y ago
      Yes, but I don't hate the hydraulics, I just like cables better, so I'm not going to go to the hassle and expense of changing what's already on my bike. My next bike, though, won't have the hydraulics. Just the discs.
      - sleepybrett 3y ago
        I only mention because I've got a pretty heavy cargo bike (rad power bikes expand) that comes with cable disc brakes that's i've found to be a little under-spec'd and went looking for options. Fully hydraulic seems like a bit of a pain (bleeding etc) and found some 'hybrid hydraulics'. In different forums I found some people that were pretty positive on them so I took a gamble and ordered but have yet to install them, they just showed up last week.
threeseed 3y ago
> Well, enter a new system intended for motor vehicles that requires fluids, frame reinforcements, and cumbersome axle fasteners and professional servicing None of that is true. Frame/axle changes also apply to calliper brakes and really any part that attaches to the bike. You can get cable actuated disc brakes that don't require any professional servicing. But if you do go with say 4 piston hydraulic then you get significantly better braking performance. Which if you're doing bike packing, touring, mountain biking etc is a huge benefit. Also of all the things in your bike cheapening out on brakes is stupid. It can be the difference between life and death.
spiderice 3y ago
I read the entire article hoping to learn why rim breaks are better than disk breaks. Other than "they're simpler", I came up pretty empty.
- trentnix 3y ago
  - Rim brakes are cheaper. The price of carbon-frame road bikes has dramatically increased because of disc brakes and inflation. - rim brakes are easier to maintain. Disc brake DIY maintenance required equipment and expertise beyond most riders. - rim brakes are more than adequate for the riding the average avid cyclist does. - A rim brake bike that has been sitting in the garage needs little TLC and service to get back in service, in contrast to a much more expensive and time-consuming effort to get a hydraulic disc back in service. - rim brakes create torque at beefier parts of the frame (where they are mounted) than at the end of the fork and end of the chain-stays and seat-stays There is no question a quality disc brake is better at braking than its rim brake counterpart. But generally it was a solution in search of a problem and makes cycling even more out of reach for most consumers despite the industry lamenting for decades that ridership was flat despite a growing population.
- i_am_jl 3y ago
  Good news, you're now thoroughly educated in all the manners that rim brakes are better than discs. Seriously. If you're bikepacking long distances or in remote areas and you're running rim brakes because they're repairable on-trail or with basic tools and every shop has parts, that's reasonable. This article is nonsense.
scheme271 3y ago
The author is wrong about cyclocross. I think people riding cross, wanted disc brakes to get wider tires and much better braking. If you've seen pictures of cross bikes after a race, cantilever rim brakes tend to get caked in mud if it's wet at all and they tend to lose a lot of power because of that. As sonmeone else pointed out, disc brakes let you use wider tires which give you a smoother more comfortable ride whether you're riding a road bike or a commuter bike. Also disc brakes automatically adjust for pad wear so there's less fiddling around once the disc brakes are initially set up.
giantg2 3y ago
Bendix drum brakes baby
ak217 3y ago
This guy speaks for himself. Rim brakes are not better for most riders most of the time. Hydraulic disc brakes deliver superior braking power, better modulation, are safer, lighter, and more reliable. Braking power in particular is very important to regular people who just want to ride their bike and use their brakes without needing death grip forearms. The guy sounds like a super bike snob. He even knows that rim brakes are unsafe in the rain and he just dismisses that for no reason.
- gomox 3y ago
  Hydraulic disc brakes are not lighter than rim counterparts. When manufacturers have both versions of a bike you can usually expect a ~1kg penalty for the disc version.
  - ak217 3y ago
    This does not match my experience. Can you give some examples?
    - macNchz 3y ago
      Here’s a model where the specs list the version with disc brakes as being 3lbs heavier: https://www.prioritybicycles.com/products/ltrain#specs https://www.prioritybicycles.com/products/ltrain#specs
    - gomox 3y ago
      https://www.cyclinguk.org/article/cycling-guide/disc-brakes https://www.cyclinguk.org/article/cycling-guide/disc-brakes > The weight penalty incurred when adopting disc brakes is in the order of 750g to 1kg
      - marcusarmstrong 3y ago
        In 2016 maybe.
  - marcusarmstrong 3y ago
E39M5S62 3y ago
I like my titanium road bike with rim brakes, I really do. But 700x28 is really the maximum tire size you can possibly fit with rim brakes. With tires trending wider - and for good reason - rim brakes are really getting left out. More often than not, I ride my gravel bike with 700x38 simply because it's a cushier ride. Good rim brakes (cantilever need not apply) can't handle a tire that size.
- bhuber 3y ago
  > But 700x28 is really the maximum tire size you can possibly fit with rim brakes This is patently false. Mountain bikes have been running tires over twice as wide on rim brakes for decades. I had one growing up in the 90s. Perhaps you mean caliper brakes? Even if so, I currently run 700x28c on my 10yo racing bike, I don't think I'd have any trouble going up a size or two.
  - E39M5S62 3y ago
    700x28 is the maximum my rim brake bike can fit. I wasn't as clear as I could have been. Other rim brake assembly types can fit more, but those are even less common on modern road groupsets.
    - mpol 3y ago
      This is partly because of history. From the 1980s on the mores in cycling was to use skinny tires. Thus there were no road bikes with cantilever brakes anymore. Up and into the 1980s touring bikes were still available with cantilever brakes. Between 2015 and 2020 we came back on skinny tires and wanted more than 28mm. This was the same time road cycling moved to disc brakes. Most bikes with rim brakes are still using calipers, cantilevers are not coming back. If you want more than 28mm, you will want disc brakes.
- beej71 3y ago
  My studded winter tires are 700x40 with rim brakes.
JohnFen 3y ago
I don't know. I live in an area that tends to be wet a lot, and for me, there's no question that disc brakes were a serious improvement on my road bike. Caliper brakes suck when everything is wet, but disc brakes keep working. And mine don't howl as they do so. They have their downsides, certainly, but overall I prefer them.
seized 3y ago
Disc brakes are absolutely better. No one laments the loss of drum brakes on cars, and apparently this person is the only one lamenting the loss of rim brakes. He also seems to be a grouchy whiner about other things, like mountain bikes, suspension, hydraulic brakes, and even one finger braking... Probably only rides alone.
ar_turnbull 3y ago
Ehhh. Rim brakes are cheaper, that’s true. They’re easier to adjust as well. There is absolutely nothing wrong with a road bike with rim brakes on it. But so long as they’re set up properly, discs are also nice - and far more confidence inspiring.
m3kw9 3y ago
Was wondering how riders like pros in Tour de France stop before disc brakes were available
- bhuber 3y ago
  They stopped just fine, but their stopping distance was twice as far, and more like 3x in the rain
  - davidw 3y ago
    The limiting factor with a road bike is the tires, not the brakes. It's super easy to lock up a wheel with rim brakes.
    - nikau 3y ago
      >It's super easy to lock up a wheel with rim brakes. Yes, that's one of the benefits of disc brakes, the "better modulation" you hear about equates to finer control and not locking up the brakes.
      - davidw 3y ago
        Maybe, but I don't buy a bit better modulation cutting braking distance in half.
        seec 3y ago
        There is no real difference with a skilled operator but proponents of "the better gear" will tell you otherwise, forgetting that their main problem is in fact their lack of skill. In the end disc brakes bikes are everywhere for the same reason 2 tons SUV are everywhere. It does not have much to do with real needs or actual real-world performance with skilled operators, sadly...
- nikau 3y ago
  How did race cars stop before disc brakes were available? A better thought is: since disc brakes were made legal 5 years ago, how many teams remained on rim brakes? the answer is almost none. And this doesn't get into things that matter for normal riding like the fact your rims don't need replacing from wear, they aren't impacted by wet weather, the better modulation, etc.
jl2718 3y ago
I switched to tubeless on rim brakes and had a downhill blowout from pressure cooking the sealant. I also tend to abuse my rims and rarely true them, so my brakes are always loose or rubbing. Both these problems may go away with carbon rims, but pincher brakes with carbon pads don’t have much stopping power. Discs do, but they are heavy and put extra torque and heat stresses on the frame, as well as a twisting moment to the straight spokes on the front, which they obviously weren’t designed for. Okay, ready for a new idea I just thought of? Hydraulic rim brakes. They are built into either side of the fork and push bigger pads into deep carbon wheel surfaces for as much braking power as you want, with the torques applied to the strongest points of the wheel and frame, and no twisting moment applied to the spokes.
- gomox 3y ago
  https://www.magurausa-shop.com/product.htm?pid=117393&cat=11908 https://www.magurausa-shop.com/product.htm?pid=117393&cat=11...
  - frabbit 3y ago
    Saw this after I posted my comment. I first came across Magura on German commuter bicycles. A good, reliable brand.
  - jl2718 3y ago
    Yes, very cool. I like the dual piston actuators, but that caliper structure seems like a limiting factor or point of failure. Also, it has to mount somewhere. It would seem natural to integrate it with the fork, so I looked up what they did with TT forks and came up with this single-piston dual-cantilever design as a separate component the P5 [1]. I was thinking of an internal fork mount for the hydraulics, a much larger pad, and a rim specially made with a wider braking surface. Somebody must have tried that in a concept design. 1. https://www.bikeradar.com/news/magura-rt8-tt-first-look/ https://www.bikeradar.com/news/magura-rt8-tt-first-look/
- frabbit 3y ago
  Magura have been making hydraulic rim brakes for German bike assemblers for at least a decade.
acyou 3y ago
Disc brakes are really strongly aliased with new bikes. Personally, I like the feeling of my new bike, which happens to have disc brakes. So, I don't mind disc brakes.
jimt1234 3y ago
Disc brakes have been infiltrating BMX, too, which is hilarious because you don't even need brakes in BMX.
wpm 3y ago
I have one bike with rim brakes, my Brompton, which is slow, and small. I would never buy or build a full size full time bike that doesn’t have at least mechanical discs. It is a no brainer. Full stop. (Heh, get it???) The four pots on my cargo bike can stop me, another adult, and itself (200kg or so) in what feels like 5 feet from 20mph. They are powerful enough that when I first got it I had to stop myself from pulling the levers so hard, cause I’d skid with barely any effort. Such a bike would be impossible with rims. There’s being romantic about old bikes and old, simpler tech, but this is just dumb.
nigwil_ 3y ago
The reason some of us MTBers switched: a single outing with rim-brakes in wet/muddy/dusty conditions would grind a set of pads to nothing (adding $25+ per outing for replacements), along with the wheel rim being ground thin to the point where the wheel wall would fail. Disc brakes last repeated use in adverse conditions and braking force remained consistent over many hours.
micro_cam 3y ago
I rode mountain and road/commuters with rim brakes for years and I would give up gears and suspension before disc brakes and dropper seat posts.
oldbbsnickname 3y ago
Biking for 40+ years from around the neighborhood to centuries, and do maintenance except cost-prohibitive procedures. I have road and mountain bikes with rim brakes (grew up with them), disc brakes, and a 4kW scooter with disc brakes and regenerative braking. Disc brakes are high maintenance: oil (leaks and water content), pads, and springs. Rim brakes are more-or-less maintenance-free except cleaning the rims maybe every year or 2, and pads every 5-10 years. Only rarely alignment. The mechanical advantage and safety is theoretically better with rim brakes because the forces are much higher in disc brakes due to the differences in lever distance.
- nikau 3y ago
  > Disc brakes are high maintenance: oil (leaks and water content), pads, and springs. Wow your rim brakes don't use pads? I've found disc brakes to be so much less hassle than rim brakes - you just remove the retaining pin, spread the pads, take out old pads, drop in new pads, re-insert retaining pin, pump the lever a few times, done. All in all its a few minute job and less time consuming than swapping rim pads and adjusting toe in. Riding in wet conditions with sintered disc pads results in less frequent pad change than with rim brakes. And its certainly much less time consuming than re-lacing a wheel like I used to do once the rim was worn through from rim brakes.
- scheme271 3y ago
  Leaks aren't too common and water content isn't a problem unless you're doing extended braking (e.g. going down a long and steep mountain ). The water content only really matters if you heat the brake fluid up enough to boil the water in it.
- JohnFen 3y ago
  > Rim brakes are more-or-less maintenance-free except cleaning the rims maybe every year or 2, and pads every 5-10 years. Only rarely alignment. Damn, I wish I had that maintenance pattern with them. For me, cleaning the rims and shoes was a daily requirement during the rainy/muddy season, a set of pads would last me about a year, and the alignment needed adjustment every few months. With disc brakes, I've needed none of that aside from alignment. I have needed to adjust the alignment every so often, but that's not that big of a deal.
kazinator 3y ago
Rim brakes are suicidal garbage. This twi^H^H^Hperson hasn't spent years commuting in all sorts of weather.
perrygeo 3y ago
I'll add to the chorus. Disc brakes are vastly superior in terms of ride quality. I won't rehash all those points. If you want to stop fast, use disc brakes. But rim brakes don't just suck to use. They're also a fundamentally flawed design from an engineering/maintenance perspective. Rim brakes repurpose the rim itself as the braking surface. Yeah - the structural element holding the tire bead in place is also the surface to which you apply massive heat and friction. Millimeters away from your cloth and rubber tire. Who even thought of this design? A misaligned brake pad can rub directly on the tire and puncture it. Grit in the brake pads can destroy the rim causing it to release the tire bead. Heat can cook your tire sealant and cause punctures. The materials and shape of the rim are limited to what can support a flat metal braking surface. If the wheel is out of true, your brakes rub. There are so many problems that stem directly from using the rim as a braking surface. It's just a bad design.
frabbit 3y ago
You have all been trolled. BikeSnobNYC strikes again.
Simulacra 3y ago
I'm OK with disc brakes, but perhaps I'm a Luddite, I think electronic shifting is terrible. Don't get me wrong, it's cool, but I think it's a step too far.
- davidw 3y ago
  It is fast; it's like just think about changing gears and poof, it's done. But I hate having yet another electronic device in my life that I have to keep charged up.
  - Simulacra 3y ago
    It's really cool, but it's changed racing and it doesn't feel traditional anymore. Proper gear change, shift wear and tear, those are aspects of racing. I could be a Luddite, but maybe I'm just a traditionalist.
Gualdrapo 3y ago
I fail to see how rim brakes are "cheaper", like they claim at the closing section. Yes, an hydraulic disc brake system is (still) more expensive than a set of rim brakes, and I guess the difference is bigger for road bicycle ones. But disk bike pads now are in many cases even cheaper than rim brake pads - and they can last longer. In my use case, disc brakes are way less prone to dis-alignment compared to rim brakes - and hence less prone to unnecessary wear and reduction of the cyclist's performance. And conversely, disc brakes won't be affected if the rim is not completely true for whatever reason. And - most importantly - disc brakes don't wear the rim at all but an inexpensive rotor that lasts much longer in comparison. In my case, having to replace both rims on my commuter each 3 years or so was no joke - the first time I ignored the serious wear they had until they comically bent a bit when going over a dirty road - and fortunately nothing happened to me, as there have been cases when they make people crash due to their sudden breakage.
Euphorbium 3y ago
What a strange hate boner for disk breaks. Hydraulic disk breaks are an absolute delight. V-breaks have worn a hole in my rim and I had to replace the wheel. It also damadged the tire, which had to be replaced too.
francoispon 3y ago
I bought a top end pinarello last year which has (obviously because there is no other choice) some disc brakes, and I hate them so much compared to my oldest bike with rim brakes which was fine and working well.. the disc brake needs so much maintenance compared to the rim brakes and make so much annoying noise, i always need to make sure to have them right by the milimeter and make sure when you transport the bike and remove the wheel to block them or they would start to misaligned, this thing is such a ripoff..... I need to add that i never had any issues with my rim brakes while descending long mountain downhill.. it may brake a bit less than the disc brakes when wet but i just need to make careful and anticipate my braking more... but it's raining so I should make careful anyway!!!! (context: i am a old grumpy european cyclist who lives by the alpes and does around 5/7k of road cycling a year for the last 10/15 years)
LinAGKar 3y ago
Maybe I'm missing something, but I read through the whole thing and I didn't find any arguments for why rim breaks are better. Except something about them being simpler
vanilla_nut 3y ago
A well reasoned article. Though I think Eben (aka Bike Snob NYC) has a tendency to jump straight into his core arguments without necessarily getting all his readers on the same page (hence the heat in this thread!) I've done a lot of bike building, repair, maintenance, and comparisons, particularly in the last few years. Up until 2000 or so, disc brakes did not exist for bicycles in a meaningful way. They were very popular on motorcycles, trains, and automobiles, largely because they provide stopping power for longer than the previous popular technology, drum brakes. And because they are arguably more maintainable than drum brakes, which are allegedly a pain in the ass to work on. Automobiles mostly moved to discs by the 50s or so; trains moved even earlier. Bikes, on the other hand, had two (or three) competing brake systems prior to the 2000s. The most popular by far worldwide is rim brakes, the familiar clamping system that rubs pads on the rim of the wheel. These work great, are easy to maintain, and easy to fix when something goes wrong. Their biggest downside is wet, and even moreso muddy conditions, which can significantly reduce braking power when crap gets between the pad and the rim. And older cantilever brakes are really really tricky to set up, especially if you don't do it much. The 90s saw a significant improvement here with the development of Shimano's V-brake, which simplified rim brake tweaking to the point where basically anyone could do it. V-brakes are essentially "good enough for anyone". But racers drive the bicycle part industry. Competition leads to the constant drive for new parts; companies sponsor top racers to get their parts on display at racing events; non-pro racers across the USA spend millions of dollars per year chasing incremental gains with these upgrades. So racers moved to disc brakes. They were initially really heavy (they require attachment points and pad hardware that's much more substantial than the rim brake equivalents), really expensive, and not much of an improvement over rim brakes. Eventually folks figured out that hydraulic brakes (which use tubes filled with mineral oil instead of cables for actuation) could provide extra stopping power with less effort. And so all racing bikes adopted hydraulic disc brakes in the early 2010s. Unfortunately, everything in the bike industry chases racing fads. There are only a couple of major parts manufacturers (shimano and SRAM) that make complete sets of brakes, drivetrains, and levers. This is changing with the recent growing popularity of brands like microShift, but most frame manufacturers have existing relationships with shimano and SRAM -- picture something like the Qualcomm domination in the smartphone SoC industry. And since those two big brands build racing and racing-inspired equipment, that's what we all get. Most commuters do not need hydraulic disc brakes. They are an expensive luxury; there's no denying the stopping power is superior, but you don't need it if you're riding at 10-20mph across town to get to your job or pick up some groceries. As other commenters have pointed out, you're also fucked if something happens to one of your brake lines (aka oil filled tubes) because it's nearly impossible to fix on the road. That's a big downside! Anyway, sorry for the rant -- the discussion here just really ground my gears because it's so similar to the flaws I see with our community when folks talk about technology or even finance: people don't acknowledge that there's context (and personal preference) involved with picking the right tool for the job. Disc brakes are kind of like Kubernetes: great for heavy workloads, occasionally a pain, but overkill for the lighter workloads unless you enjoy geeking out (that's the personal preference bit). Rim brakes are more like running something on a Raspberry Pi: dumb for heavy workloads, but often a good price:performance ratio for lighter workloads. I wish folks in our community would have a little more empathy and mutual understanding instead of constantly insisting that they're correct. I feel like HN used to be better about this, but I think this behaviour has crept in more and more since Reddit self-immolated.

20 points by mareko 3y ago

I used to do fast descents of Bonny Doon and similar. Think 60Mph / 100kmhr at the base. With my fat butt and damp brakes I would run through the stop signs at the bottom using rim brakes. I’ll never go back to rim brakes now that I’ve had discs. I still use my rim brake bikes for clear weather around town. For real work it is discs every single time. The author seems to have only used bicycles in optimal conditions.

yborg 3y ago
I'm old and back in the day all we had were caliper brakes on road bikes and I rode two centuries in the rain in a paceline and somehow we all survived, as did all those decades of Tour de France riders. Maybe guys can only do "real work" with disc brakes now, but at least in the past riders managed with rim brakes outside of optimal conditions. Maybe excessive smartphone usage is compromising grip strength these days...
- hasmolo 3y ago
  did you feel attacked by the OP in some way?
- MrStonedOne 3y ago
  [dead]
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

diziet_sma 3y ago

> Nobody Asked For Them After riding a mountain bike with disk brakes, I couldn't wait to get a road bike with disk brakes. > Then Why Did We Get Them? Because they're better. Full stop. I can stop faster with less effort. > Rim Brakes Are Better For Most Riders Most Of The Time I don't need any brakes at all most of the time either, but when I need them I really need them.

deleted 3y ago
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wg0 3y ago
Basically - disc brakes are mostly install and forget. Take very minimal force to apply. Changing pads is trivial. And not to mention how much effortless it is to apply the brakes compared to cable brakes where there's friction within the cable hose. I can't go back to cable brakes after using disc brakes. Even for normal grocery trips. Nothing recreational.

davidw 3y ago

This seems a bit extreme. My take: * Mountain bikes are better with them. I hate the low tolerances in terms of adjusting the damn things though. * I guess they're better with carbon rims on road bikes? * But the 'limiting factor' in stopping a road bike in most cases is the road/tire contact patch, not the brakes. I can lock up a road bike just fine with caliper brakes.

threeseed 3y ago
> they're better with carbon rims on road bikes Carbon rims are becoming more popular across cycling not just on road. They are stronger, lighter, less fragile and the quality is improving such that I bought a pair with a lifetime warranty. And carbon rims are worse than aluminium with calliper brakes especially in wet weather conditions.
- davidw 3y ago
  I have carbon rims on my MTB, and I think disk brakes there generally seem like a decent idea. The rims are more exposed to mud and muck, and the added stopping power is nice. I'm less convinced about road bikes though.
trentnix 3y ago
Carbon rims (prior to 2016 or so) were notorious for offering a poor braking experience and you ran the risk of overheating the brake surface on big descents and potentially delaminating the carbon rim. Better wheels and pads were manufactured, resulting in a much better experience when riding on higher quality wheels. No mistake, disc brakes offer better braking power and a superior braking experience to rim brakes but the difference is nowhere as big as it used to be.

prhn 3y ago

If you're not an avid cyclist please take this article with a grain of salt. It's largely understood that disc brakes are better, full stop. A few guys in my cycling group who are still on rim brakes will not take the really fun descents, even when it's completely dry. They don't trust them. Pad fade, overheating brake surfaces causing de-lamination and popping inner tubes. So, sure, if all you're ever going to do is ride on a flat surface in dry conditions rim brakes are fine, but not better. It's arguable rim brakes are slightly more aero. I like my bones unbroken, so I'll take the penalty. I also find servicing hydraulic disc brakes to be more intuitive. Having to fiddle with the tension of rim brakes' mechanical cables to get them just right was always much more cumbersome to me.

uoaei 3y ago
Interesting you prefer hydraulic specifically, even the disc brake zealots mostly agree mechanical is more reliable and easier to maintain.
- jhot 3y ago
  I'm with the op, once you get used to servicing hydraulic I find them easier in many regards and require less frequent adjusting. Sure if you get a leak on trail you're screwed, but that has happened to one bike one time in my riding group over the last 10+ years. I will be happy to have a cable-free bike someday.
  - nikau 3y ago
    > once you get used to servicing hydraulic In my experience with over 40,000km on Shimano hydraulics, the only servicing is swapping pads when the pad wear spring starts screeching against the rotor. My early 2000 era Magura hyrdros were a bit shit and required a lot of maintenance and issues with sticking callipers, but shimanos made in the last 15 years are pretty much perfected and maintenance free.
- dc3k 3y ago
  This is absolutely the opposite of my experience and the experience of anybody I've ever met who has actually ridden a bicycle before.

imperialdrive 3y ago

Uhhh yeah, do yourself a favor, pay no attention to this article. Always buy hydraulic disc brakes whenever possible. The rest of the bike can be whatever, but when it comes to stopping power, you will smile endlessly from the smooth yet responsive safety hydraulic disc brakes provide. They are inexpensive and easy to replace, and need much less maintenance to adjust. Every single time you brake, at all, you will be thankful. The only thing close to as important IMHO is good lights.

JohnFen 3y ago
I love my disc brakes, but I don't like the hydraulic aspect of them. I do wish that they used cables, instead. Those are easier for me to maintain/repair. I only use my bike to commute, though, and I don't think that there's a real difference in performance between hydraulic and cable with that use case so it's all about ease of maintenance for me.
- sleepybrett 3y ago
  They make cable disc breaks and cable actuated hydraulic disc breaks as well.
  - JohnFen 3y ago
    Yes, but I don't hate the hydraulics, I just like cables better, so I'm not going to go to the hassle and expense of changing what's already on my bike. My next bike, though, won't have the hydraulics. Just the discs.
    - sleepybrett 3y ago
      I only mention because I've got a pretty heavy cargo bike (rad power bikes expand) that comes with cable disc brakes that's i've found to be a little under-spec'd and went looking for options. Fully hydraulic seems like a bit of a pain (bleeding etc) and found some 'hybrid hydraulics'. In different forums I found some people that were pretty positive on them so I took a gamble and ordered but have yet to install them, they just showed up last week.

threeseed 3y ago

> Well, enter a new system intended for motor vehicles that requires fluids, frame reinforcements, and cumbersome axle fasteners and professional servicing None of that is true. Frame/axle changes also apply to calliper brakes and really any part that attaches to the bike. You can get cable actuated disc brakes that don't require any professional servicing. But if you do go with say 4 piston hydraulic then you get significantly better braking performance. Which if you're doing bike packing, touring, mountain biking etc is a huge benefit. Also of all the things in your bike cheapening out on brakes is stupid. It can be the difference between life and death.

spiderice 3y ago

I read the entire article hoping to learn why rim breaks are better than disk breaks. Other than "they're simpler", I came up pretty empty.

trentnix 3y ago
- Rim brakes are cheaper. The price of carbon-frame road bikes has dramatically increased because of disc brakes and inflation. - rim brakes are easier to maintain. Disc brake DIY maintenance required equipment and expertise beyond most riders. - rim brakes are more than adequate for the riding the average avid cyclist does. - A rim brake bike that has been sitting in the garage needs little TLC and service to get back in service, in contrast to a much more expensive and time-consuming effort to get a hydraulic disc back in service. - rim brakes create torque at beefier parts of the frame (where they are mounted) than at the end of the fork and end of the chain-stays and seat-stays There is no question a quality disc brake is better at braking than its rim brake counterpart. But generally it was a solution in search of a problem and makes cycling even more out of reach for most consumers despite the industry lamenting for decades that ridership was flat despite a growing population.
i_am_jl 3y ago
Good news, you're now thoroughly educated in all the manners that rim brakes are better than discs. Seriously. If you're bikepacking long distances or in remote areas and you're running rim brakes because they're repairable on-trail or with basic tools and every shop has parts, that's reasonable. This article is nonsense.

scheme271 3y ago

The author is wrong about cyclocross. I think people riding cross, wanted disc brakes to get wider tires and much better braking. If you've seen pictures of cross bikes after a race, cantilever rim brakes tend to get caked in mud if it's wet at all and they tend to lose a lot of power because of that. As sonmeone else pointed out, disc brakes let you use wider tires which give you a smoother more comfortable ride whether you're riding a road bike or a commuter bike. Also disc brakes automatically adjust for pad wear so there's less fiddling around once the disc brakes are initially set up.

giantg2 3y ago

Bendix drum brakes baby

ak217 3y ago

This guy speaks for himself. Rim brakes are not better for most riders most of the time. Hydraulic disc brakes deliver superior braking power, better modulation, are safer, lighter, and more reliable. Braking power in particular is very important to regular people who just want to ride their bike and use their brakes without needing death grip forearms. The guy sounds like a super bike snob. He even knows that rim brakes are unsafe in the rain and he just dismisses that for no reason.

gomox 3y ago
Hydraulic disc brakes are not lighter than rim counterparts. When manufacturers have both versions of a bike you can usually expect a ~1kg penalty for the disc version.
- ak217 3y ago
  This does not match my experience. Can you give some examples?
  - macNchz 3y ago
    Here’s a model where the specs list the version with disc brakes as being 3lbs heavier: https://www.prioritybicycles.com/products/ltrain#specs https://www.prioritybicycles.com/products/ltrain#specs
  - gomox 3y ago
    https://www.cyclinguk.org/article/cycling-guide/disc-brakes https://www.cyclinguk.org/article/cycling-guide/disc-brakes > The weight penalty incurred when adopting disc brakes is in the order of 750g to 1kg
    - marcusarmstrong 3y ago
      In 2016 maybe.
- marcusarmstrong 3y ago

E39M5S62 3y ago

I like my titanium road bike with rim brakes, I really do. But 700x28 is really the maximum tire size you can possibly fit with rim brakes. With tires trending wider - and for good reason - rim brakes are really getting left out. More often than not, I ride my gravel bike with 700x38 simply because it's a cushier ride. Good rim brakes (cantilever need not apply) can't handle a tire that size.

bhuber 3y ago
> But 700x28 is really the maximum tire size you can possibly fit with rim brakes This is patently false. Mountain bikes have been running tires over twice as wide on rim brakes for decades. I had one growing up in the 90s. Perhaps you mean caliper brakes? Even if so, I currently run 700x28c on my 10yo racing bike, I don't think I'd have any trouble going up a size or two.
- E39M5S62 3y ago
  700x28 is the maximum my rim brake bike can fit. I wasn't as clear as I could have been. Other rim brake assembly types can fit more, but those are even less common on modern road groupsets.
  - mpol 3y ago
    This is partly because of history. From the 1980s on the mores in cycling was to use skinny tires. Thus there were no road bikes with cantilever brakes anymore. Up and into the 1980s touring bikes were still available with cantilever brakes. Between 2015 and 2020 we came back on skinny tires and wanted more than 28mm. This was the same time road cycling moved to disc brakes. Most bikes with rim brakes are still using calipers, cantilevers are not coming back. If you want more than 28mm, you will want disc brakes.
beej71 3y ago
My studded winter tires are 700x40 with rim brakes.

JohnFen 3y ago

I don't know. I live in an area that tends to be wet a lot, and for me, there's no question that disc brakes were a serious improvement on my road bike. Caliper brakes suck when everything is wet, but disc brakes keep working. And mine don't howl as they do so. They have their downsides, certainly, but overall I prefer them.

seized 3y ago

Disc brakes are absolutely better. No one laments the loss of drum brakes on cars, and apparently this person is the only one lamenting the loss of rim brakes. He also seems to be a grouchy whiner about other things, like mountain bikes, suspension, hydraulic brakes, and even one finger braking... Probably only rides alone.

ar_turnbull 3y ago

Ehhh. Rim brakes are cheaper, that’s true. They’re easier to adjust as well. There is absolutely nothing wrong with a road bike with rim brakes on it. But so long as they’re set up properly, discs are also nice - and far more confidence inspiring.

m3kw9 3y ago

Was wondering how riders like pros in Tour de France stop before disc brakes were available

bhuber 3y ago
They stopped just fine, but their stopping distance was twice as far, and more like 3x in the rain
- davidw 3y ago
  The limiting factor with a road bike is the tires, not the brakes. It's super easy to lock up a wheel with rim brakes.
  - nikau 3y ago
    >It's super easy to lock up a wheel with rim brakes. Yes, that's one of the benefits of disc brakes, the "better modulation" you hear about equates to finer control and not locking up the brakes.
    - davidw 3y ago
      Maybe, but I don't buy a bit better modulation cutting braking distance in half.
      - seec 3y ago
        There is no real difference with a skilled operator but proponents of "the better gear" will tell you otherwise, forgetting that their main problem is in fact their lack of skill. In the end disc brakes bikes are everywhere for the same reason 2 tons SUV are everywhere. It does not have much to do with real needs or actual real-world performance with skilled operators, sadly...
nikau 3y ago
How did race cars stop before disc brakes were available? A better thought is: since disc brakes were made legal 5 years ago, how many teams remained on rim brakes? the answer is almost none. And this doesn't get into things that matter for normal riding like the fact your rims don't need replacing from wear, they aren't impacted by wet weather, the better modulation, etc.

jl2718 3y ago

I switched to tubeless on rim brakes and had a downhill blowout from pressure cooking the sealant. I also tend to abuse my rims and rarely true them, so my brakes are always loose or rubbing. Both these problems may go away with carbon rims, but pincher brakes with carbon pads don’t have much stopping power. Discs do, but they are heavy and put extra torque and heat stresses on the frame, as well as a twisting moment to the straight spokes on the front, which they obviously weren’t designed for. Okay, ready for a new idea I just thought of? Hydraulic rim brakes. They are built into either side of the fork and push bigger pads into deep carbon wheel surfaces for as much braking power as you want, with the torques applied to the strongest points of the wheel and frame, and no twisting moment applied to the spokes.

gomox 3y ago
https://www.magurausa-shop.com/product.htm?pid=117393&cat=11908 https://www.magurausa-shop.com/product.htm?pid=117393&cat=11...
- frabbit 3y ago
  Saw this after I posted my comment. I first came across Magura on German commuter bicycles. A good, reliable brand.
- jl2718 3y ago
  Yes, very cool. I like the dual piston actuators, but that caliper structure seems like a limiting factor or point of failure. Also, it has to mount somewhere. It would seem natural to integrate it with the fork, so I looked up what they did with TT forks and came up with this single-piston dual-cantilever design as a separate component the P5 [1]. I was thinking of an internal fork mount for the hydraulics, a much larger pad, and a rim specially made with a wider braking surface. Somebody must have tried that in a concept design. 1. https://www.bikeradar.com/news/magura-rt8-tt-first-look/ https://www.bikeradar.com/news/magura-rt8-tt-first-look/
frabbit 3y ago
Magura have been making hydraulic rim brakes for German bike assemblers for at least a decade.

acyou 3y ago

Disc brakes are really strongly aliased with new bikes. Personally, I like the feeling of my new bike, which happens to have disc brakes. So, I don't mind disc brakes.

jimt1234 3y ago

Disc brakes have been infiltrating BMX, too, which is hilarious because you don't even need brakes in BMX.

wpm 3y ago

I have one bike with rim brakes, my Brompton, which is slow, and small. I would never buy or build a full size full time bike that doesn’t have at least mechanical discs. It is a no brainer. Full stop. (Heh, get it???) The four pots on my cargo bike can stop me, another adult, and itself (200kg or so) in what feels like 5 feet from 20mph. They are powerful enough that when I first got it I had to stop myself from pulling the levers so hard, cause I’d skid with barely any effort. Such a bike would be impossible with rims. There’s being romantic about old bikes and old, simpler tech, but this is just dumb.

nigwil_ 3y ago

The reason some of us MTBers switched: a single outing with rim-brakes in wet/muddy/dusty conditions would grind a set of pads to nothing (adding $25+ per outing for replacements), along with the wheel rim being ground thin to the point where the wheel wall would fail. Disc brakes last repeated use in adverse conditions and braking force remained consistent over many hours.

micro_cam 3y ago

I rode mountain and road/commuters with rim brakes for years and I would give up gears and suspension before disc brakes and dropper seat posts.

oldbbsnickname 3y ago

Biking for 40+ years from around the neighborhood to centuries, and do maintenance except cost-prohibitive procedures. I have road and mountain bikes with rim brakes (grew up with them), disc brakes, and a 4kW scooter with disc brakes and regenerative braking. Disc brakes are high maintenance: oil (leaks and water content), pads, and springs. Rim brakes are more-or-less maintenance-free except cleaning the rims maybe every year or 2, and pads every 5-10 years. Only rarely alignment. The mechanical advantage and safety is theoretically better with rim brakes because the forces are much higher in disc brakes due to the differences in lever distance.

nikau 3y ago
> Disc brakes are high maintenance: oil (leaks and water content), pads, and springs. Wow your rim brakes don't use pads? I've found disc brakes to be so much less hassle than rim brakes - you just remove the retaining pin, spread the pads, take out old pads, drop in new pads, re-insert retaining pin, pump the lever a few times, done. All in all its a few minute job and less time consuming than swapping rim pads and adjusting toe in. Riding in wet conditions with sintered disc pads results in less frequent pad change than with rim brakes. And its certainly much less time consuming than re-lacing a wheel like I used to do once the rim was worn through from rim brakes.
scheme271 3y ago
Leaks aren't too common and water content isn't a problem unless you're doing extended braking (e.g. going down a long and steep mountain ). The water content only really matters if you heat the brake fluid up enough to boil the water in it.
JohnFen 3y ago
> Rim brakes are more-or-less maintenance-free except cleaning the rims maybe every year or 2, and pads every 5-10 years. Only rarely alignment. Damn, I wish I had that maintenance pattern with them. For me, cleaning the rims and shoes was a daily requirement during the rainy/muddy season, a set of pads would last me about a year, and the alignment needed adjustment every few months. With disc brakes, I've needed none of that aside from alignment. I have needed to adjust the alignment every so often, but that's not that big of a deal.

kazinator 3y ago

Rim brakes are suicidal garbage. This twi^H^H^Hperson hasn't spent years commuting in all sorts of weather.

perrygeo 3y ago

I'll add to the chorus. Disc brakes are vastly superior in terms of ride quality. I won't rehash all those points. If you want to stop fast, use disc brakes. But rim brakes don't just suck to use. They're also a fundamentally flawed design from an engineering/maintenance perspective. Rim brakes repurpose the rim itself as the braking surface. Yeah - the structural element holding the tire bead in place is also the surface to which you apply massive heat and friction. Millimeters away from your cloth and rubber tire. Who even thought of this design? A misaligned brake pad can rub directly on the tire and puncture it. Grit in the brake pads can destroy the rim causing it to release the tire bead. Heat can cook your tire sealant and cause punctures. The materials and shape of the rim are limited to what can support a flat metal braking surface. If the wheel is out of true, your brakes rub. There are so many problems that stem directly from using the rim as a braking surface. It's just a bad design.

frabbit 3y ago

You have all been trolled. BikeSnobNYC strikes again.

Simulacra 3y ago

I'm OK with disc brakes, but perhaps I'm a Luddite, I think electronic shifting is terrible. Don't get me wrong, it's cool, but I think it's a step too far.

davidw 3y ago
It is fast; it's like just think about changing gears and poof, it's done. But I hate having yet another electronic device in my life that I have to keep charged up.
- Simulacra 3y ago
  It's really cool, but it's changed racing and it doesn't feel traditional anymore. Proper gear change, shift wear and tear, those are aspects of racing. I could be a Luddite, but maybe I'm just a traditionalist.

Gualdrapo 3y ago

I fail to see how rim brakes are "cheaper", like they claim at the closing section. Yes, an hydraulic disc brake system is (still) more expensive than a set of rim brakes, and I guess the difference is bigger for road bicycle ones. But disk bike pads now are in many cases even cheaper than rim brake pads - and they can last longer. In my use case, disc brakes are way less prone to dis-alignment compared to rim brakes - and hence less prone to unnecessary wear and reduction of the cyclist's performance. And conversely, disc brakes won't be affected if the rim is not completely true for whatever reason. And - most importantly - disc brakes don't wear the rim at all but an inexpensive rotor that lasts much longer in comparison. In my case, having to replace both rims on my commuter each 3 years or so was no joke - the first time I ignored the serious wear they had until they comically bent a bit when going over a dirty road - and fortunately nothing happened to me, as there have been cases when they make people crash due to their sudden breakage.

Euphorbium 3y ago

What a strange hate boner for disk breaks. Hydraulic disk breaks are an absolute delight. V-breaks have worn a hole in my rim and I had to replace the wheel. It also damadged the tire, which had to be replaced too.

francoispon 3y ago

I bought a top end pinarello last year which has (obviously because there is no other choice) some disc brakes, and I hate them so much compared to my oldest bike with rim brakes which was fine and working well.. the disc brake needs so much maintenance compared to the rim brakes and make so much annoying noise, i always need to make sure to have them right by the milimeter and make sure when you transport the bike and remove the wheel to block them or they would start to misaligned, this thing is such a ripoff..... I need to add that i never had any issues with my rim brakes while descending long mountain downhill.. it may brake a bit less than the disc brakes when wet but i just need to make careful and anticipate my braking more... but it's raining so I should make careful anyway!!!! (context: i am a old grumpy european cyclist who lives by the alpes and does around 5/7k of road cycling a year for the last 10/15 years)

LinAGKar 3y ago

Maybe I'm missing something, but I read through the whole thing and I didn't find any arguments for why rim breaks are better. Except something about them being simpler

vanilla_nut 3y ago

A well reasoned article. Though I think Eben (aka Bike Snob NYC) has a tendency to jump straight into his core arguments without necessarily getting all his readers on the same page (hence the heat in this thread!) I've done a lot of bike building, repair, maintenance, and comparisons, particularly in the last few years. Up until 2000 or so, disc brakes did not exist for bicycles in a meaningful way. They were very popular on motorcycles, trains, and automobiles, largely because they provide stopping power for longer than the previous popular technology, drum brakes. And because they are arguably more maintainable than drum brakes, which are allegedly a pain in the ass to work on. Automobiles mostly moved to discs by the 50s or so; trains moved even earlier. Bikes, on the other hand, had two (or three) competing brake systems prior to the 2000s. The most popular by far worldwide is rim brakes, the familiar clamping system that rubs pads on the rim of the wheel. These work great, are easy to maintain, and easy to fix when something goes wrong. Their biggest downside is wet, and even moreso muddy conditions, which can significantly reduce braking power when crap gets between the pad and the rim. And older cantilever brakes are really really tricky to set up, especially if you don't do it much. The 90s saw a significant improvement here with the development of Shimano's V-brake, which simplified rim brake tweaking to the point where basically anyone could do it. V-brakes are essentially "good enough for anyone". But racers drive the bicycle part industry. Competition leads to the constant drive for new parts; companies sponsor top racers to get their parts on display at racing events; non-pro racers across the USA spend millions of dollars per year chasing incremental gains with these upgrades. So racers moved to disc brakes. They were initially really heavy (they require attachment points and pad hardware that's much more substantial than the rim brake equivalents), really expensive, and not much of an improvement over rim brakes. Eventually folks figured out that hydraulic brakes (which use tubes filled with mineral oil instead of cables for actuation) could provide extra stopping power with less effort. And so all racing bikes adopted hydraulic disc brakes in the early 2010s. Unfortunately, everything in the bike industry chases racing fads. There are only a couple of major parts manufacturers (shimano and SRAM) that make complete sets of brakes, drivetrains, and levers. This is changing with the recent growing popularity of brands like microShift, but most frame manufacturers have existing relationships with shimano and SRAM -- picture something like the Qualcomm domination in the smartphone SoC industry. And since those two big brands build racing and racing-inspired equipment, that's what we all get. Most commuters do not need hydraulic disc brakes. They are an expensive luxury; there's no denying the stopping power is superior, but you don't need it if you're riding at 10-20mph across town to get to your job or pick up some groceries. As other commenters have pointed out, you're also fucked if something happens to one of your brake lines (aka oil filled tubes) because it's nearly impossible to fix on the road. That's a big downside! Anyway, sorry for the rant -- the discussion here just really ground my gears because it's so similar to the flaws I see with our community when folks talk about technology or even finance: people don't acknowledge that there's context (and personal preference) involved with picking the right tool for the job. Disc brakes are kind of like Kubernetes: great for heavy workloads, occasionally a pain, but overkill for the lighter workloads unless you enjoy geeking out (that's the personal preference bit). Rim brakes are more like running something on a Raspberry Pi: dumb for heavy workloads, but often a good price:performance ratio for lighter workloads. I wish folks in our community would have a little more empathy and mutual understanding instead of constantly insisting that they're correct. I feel like HN used to be better about this, but I think this behaviour has crept in more and more since Reddit self-immolated.