Rim brakes are fine for road biking and fine for a touring bike where speeds aren't getting too fast. I can see the allure to disc brake equipped touring bikes though since the weight is higher and the possibility of over cooking a rim on a mountain descent is real.
However.... There is absolutely no way I'm going back to rim brakes on mountain bikes though....and hydraulics are so much better than cable in that arena. Here is the thing, hydraulic disc brakes are super simple to work on and aren't a black box, no more so than cable actuated brakes. The feel of disc brakes when ripping down a trail is loads better than rim brakes, and that includes v-brakes which are strong, powerful brakes. The ease at which I can scrub speed on my Trek Fuel which uses Shimano XT hydraulic disc is so awesome and needed, because I really don't think I could be riding the way I do down the trail with a rim brake. Two problems exist with rim braking on a mountain bike, IMHO...mud and grime getting all over the brake track which seems to happen on every ride, and the lever feel stays the same with disc, which doesn't with rim braking. I'm not describing that correctly though; what I mean is that rim braking doesn't seem consistent in the muddy world of mountain biking, compared to hydraulic disc. I took my very nice 1996 26" wheeled specialized stumpjumper with canti's out on the trail not too long ago just to see how it rode and play around. The one thing I took from that ride is that rim brakes on mountain bikes suck compared to a disc brake setup. No contest. Setting up and servicing hydraulic disc brakes like Shimano's XTs is an easier process than setting up canti brakes, especially premier brakes like Pauls, which I find are a pain in the butt to work on. Seriously, they aren't difficult at all. On Friday, May 13, 2016 at 9:19:47 AM UTC-5, Will wrote: > Might be nice to push back to GP and encourage more of these posts. > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to rbw-owners-bunch+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to rbw-owners-bunch@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/rbw-owners-bunch. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
