TYKE wrote:TISH TOSH PISH POSH !!
Discs are the way ahead. As technology improves they have become lighter, more efficient and are a doddle to service and set up. Anyone with an ounce of spannering experience can sort them out ....
And as for not knowing when your pads wear out ??? Lazy poor maintenance !! Do you wait until your cars brakes fail or the light comes on to put a new set of pads in ???
The whinging pros who claim they have been burned or had their shoes cut through by a rotor are talking cobblers ....and If disc brakes are so terrible then why are ALL the main manufactures making bikes with discs ???hmmmm??
Or should we go back to cable operated cantilevers with rubber brake blocks and do away with all " this new fangled technology"??
But if the Luddites prefer old tech rim
brakes then so be it - but get off the case of those who prefer improved stopping power
Like the many other people who ride bikes wearing helmets they have an irrational fear, a misunderstanding of risk, that same fear is being felt in the pro ranks regarding discs. Whinging pros you say, maybe if you've had your foot/shoe cut, maybe if you've had a big gouge out of your leg and wonder what was recently added to some bikes that might cause it, you know that big steel thing that projects from the front and rear of the bike it would give you very good reason to think it was that item that was the cause.
Why are manufacturers making bikes with discs, well it's their job to sell things to make profit, pure and simple.
Performance advantage, not really. you might save a couple of seconds on approach to braking points on some of the steeper high speed stuff in the wet but any gain there is still defined by tyre traction and the ability of the rider to read the terrain, to know their limits in being able to get around a corner without the tyres letting go, discs won't aid that.
Riders are possibly more likely to crash as they'll think they can brake later and as I said before it's then all down to traction of the tyre and the riders ability. They can't make you go round corners quicker as many idiotic reviewers state, that's just BS.
Then we come to aero losses, we already know that the forks particularly are having to be beefed up to take the forces that discs but the aero losses add up to a significant amount, 4-8 watts, more if there's side winds, at the top end that's a difference not to be sniffed at at that level.
For the non racer they are even less needed and just dumb down cycling, just as discs/ABS/traction control etc on cars have, people now drive faster because they they can brake better/quicker then again find it's tyre traction and their ability to think/understand the hazard that is much more important.
