Biospace wrote:I chose four significant benefits of each system, of course there are plenty more smaller benefits on each side. For me, feeding larger and lob-sided forces into something as finely engineered as a good bike, especially given these forces act in a way to pull the front wheel out of the fork, more than balances the benefits of brakes which keep a bike cleaner in wet weather and which wear down the braking surface of many thousands of miles.
Throughout this thread I've mentioned more than a few times a disc brake tandem(Cannondale Road Tandem),the extra weight(190kg all up)a tandem carries far outweighs any touring bike.We never ever had any problems with the front wheel pulling out of the fork or stopping the bike,whatever the conditions braking was consistently and predictably very good.Similarly so the three solos I own,which BTW all have the front dropouts facing forword so any braking forces push the wheel into not out of the dropouts.They're well engineered machines
From https://road.cc/content/feature/213876- ... ind-tunnel,
"We've measured a 16% increase in wheel drag between a disc-braked wheelset and a standard wheelset", Jean-Paul told us. "We performed a direct back to back test of the Zipp 303FC in standard version and disc brake version, for our own competitor comparison purposes. That 16% is a constant offset in the performance curve across the entire cross wind angle range."
Forgive me for mentioning the fact this is a mostly touring forum and mostly slanted in that direction,shaving seconds or minute or five off a ride isn't in most tourists remit.
The linked article is mostly about wannabie stava strugglers or racing,and the 16% saving is based on a consistent wind yaw,rides seldom if ever have such consistencies,roads tend to change course constantly.There's also touring luggage to consider which from a wind POV far outweighs any minor disadvantage a disc rotor or caliper may cause.
We could argue back and forth about this,but the thing is,as a(slow)tourist the reason I choose discs is because they have real value to me because they stop me consistently and predictably in all conditions with great moduation and enough power to lock up either wheel should I wish,my bikes are comfortable for all day riding whatever the conditions.
I don't chase times or look at averages or do strava segments,etc,they have no appeal to me.So whilst a slight loss of aero may be of value to you and I have arguement with you on that,predictable stopping has far more value to me and I suspect the OP and other tourists on this thread who,for very good reasons choose discs over rim brakes.