Apologies for resurrecting such a stale thread with a giant post, please feel free to ignore while I add yet another two cents to the discussion…
The reason I've always been attracted to Rivendell bikes is their resistance to the general trend of making bikes more complicated then they need to be. So much of "progress" with bikes (and with stuff in general) is about applying technology for technology's sake, making bikes complicated, expensive and generally worse to ride in the name of performance or "efficiency" or whatever. Before I discovered Rivendell, I mostly built and rode old bikes for this reason. But of course, not *all* new technology is bad. Sometimes new technologies come along and they really do make riding better. My general rule of thumb is, it's better if it makes things *simpler*. For me the perfect example is riding with dynamos wheels. They are new-fangled, technically more complicated, more advanced. And you do deal with some extra complexity during your wheel/bike build. But after that, you never have to worry about your lights again. For folks that ride at night, a bike with generator lights is far simpler. It feels freeing, it feels like less to worry about, the way a bike is supposed to feel. I sometimes wish dynamo hubs were easier to take apart and service, but in practice they last plenty long and like most sealed hubs the bearings rarely fail. So what about disc brakes? I've owned bikes with disc brakes before, but they were always special purpose bikes like tandems or cargo bikes that needed tons of stopping power. I was never happy with how fussy they seemed, but I did like how well they worked in the rain. They seemed like they primarily belonged on special purpose bikes, and I never considered putting them on my daily driver. It seemed like disc brake technology, driven by racers and extreme mountain bikers, were chasing things I didn't care about: theoretical stopping power and "modulation", weight savings, etc. Meanwhile, they were ignoring things I did care about by heedlessly making bikes more complex: lines to bleed, new tools to own, and an insane parade of new frame and hub "innovations" that promised obsolescence was just around the corner. A few things convinced me to put disc brakes on my "normal" bike. One, I was in a wreck where stopping distance was the primary factor in me walking away OK. I knew that in the rain with cantilever brakes the result would have been different (which isn't to say disc brakes alone would have saved me). It rains all winter in Portland, and that experience had me spooked enough that I started thinking seriously about disc brakes for my commute. Two, the aforementioned wreck ruined the fork and buckled the down tube and top tube on my Atlantis. When I decided to repair it, I had a once in a lifetime (hopefully) opportunity to change the braking system at minimal extra cost. Three, there finally seemed to be some decent, no-nonsense brake calipers on the market. The Paul Klampers were particularly appealing. They are made by a company that I trust to provide support and replacement parts for the life of the bike. They prioritize simplicity in their design. They are unabashedly mechanical. You can completely take apart and re-assemble them with basic tools in a few minutes. And, in the name of dependability, they are wonderfully overbuilt, just like my Atlantis. It'd be a stretch to say the Klampers are designed for normal people (as their price belies), but they are the closest thing I've seen so far. So, with some reservations, I decided to go for it. But I wondered, would it be an improvement on a bike I loved dearly that already braked just fine? Would they make my bike simpler or more complex? The answer for me is a mixed bag. Good disc brakes do make bikes simpler in meaningful ways. They are things technophile complexity-hawkers never talk about. Your bike and especially your rims stay far cleaner with disc brakes, so when you stop to change a flat you don't end up with filthy hands. That's a big deal, especially if you ever ride for practical transportation! Your rims don't wear our after a particularly hard wet season. You don't have to worry about stones in your pads or riding when a wheel is slightly out of true. You don't have to disengage the brakes or deflate to remove a wheel with a plump tire. With the Klampers at least, pad adjustment is easier than any brake system I have owned (which is important because you'll probably adjust them more often than rim brakes). Klampers have two big wheels you can turn with your fingers. It's more intuitive than adjusting brake shoes and it doesn't take any tools. Last but not least, disc brakes really do work better – not theoretically better but honest real-world better – in the rain. All these advantages are ones that make riding a bike nicer, simpler, more fun for just about anyone who rides a bike. Not performance-oriented gear heads, but normal folks who want to just ride. However, there are also a bunch of everyday problems with disc brakes. Again, not stuff people usually talk about. Stuff that will be a nuisance for most people and a total bummer for some. Number one, reinstalling the wheel is harder. You have to align the disc into the very narrow gap between the pads. I have a friend who got a new commuter bike with disc brakes and the first time she got a flat she couldn't get the rear wheel back on without taking it to a shop. She's no newbie, she's changed flats before living in canti-world, but aligning the rotor into its tiny slot while holding back the derailler cage and getting into the dropouts was just too much. Her's were hydraulic disc brakes, and sometimes with those you also have to wedge something in between the pads to push them to back out far enough to fit the rotor. Could component makers make this easier? Maybe add a quick release function so it's easier to get the rotor between the pads? I'm not a component designer, but the point is I don't think the industry is trying to do these things. The goal isn't simplicity, it's lighter calipers or integration with the latest drivetrain fad or some other such nonsense. Number two, when you reinstall the wheel you typically have to do some fine tuning or the pads will rub slightly. Ideally anyone who rides a bike should be able to fix a flat themselves, but now they have to learn extra things and take an extra 5 minutes on each flat and boy is it a pain to get the pads to stop rubbing when you don't have a stand or a friend to hold the bike up while you spin the wheel and adjust the pads. There are some little tricks you can use but none of them are intuitive and it's just that much more to learn. Hydraulic disc brakes also claim to be adjustment-free but in my experience that just means you can't adjust them and they rub all the same. At least the Klampers make adjustments easy. Still, I can't help but wonder if brake makers could make this more practical if they were focused on the needs of normal riders. The industry probably thinks it has already solved this with thru-axels but you can count me suspicious. A brake system that demands a whole new frame and fork design (not to mention rack placement), a new hub design, new skewers – that doesn't seem simpler. What will happen when the industry moves on to some other standard? Number three, you can't keep an eye on pad wear - to check it you generally have to remove the wheel. I don't see any reason why someone couldn't design a caliper where you could easily inspect the pads, but no one has. Perhaps because they are all busy chasing performance and the next thing? With Klampers, you can just barely see the pads from one angle but you'll probably have to get off the bike to see the front pads and you'll have to flip the bike over to see the rear. Perhaps some folks are not going to pay attention to pad wear no matter how obvious you make it, but it seems to me that hiding them away makes the bike more complex and maybe even more dangerous. If you can't see it, it's harder to check it, harder to understand it, harder to explain it – it turns the whole brake caliper into a mystery braking box instead of a simple machine. -- More than ever I feel that Rivendell is both right and wrong to resist the disc brake trend. I believe disc brakes probably *could* make bikes simpler and more joyful but for an industry that pursues all the wrong things. And perhaps someday they will. More and more commuter bikes have them, and perhaps we will see the emergence of a new component line that priorities simplicity and maintainability over theoretical performance and weight savings. Will they be able to do that without inventing yet another frame standard? Will we ever see the emergence of a classic, timeless disc brake design that will still be available and work just as well 30 years down the line? One can only hope. -- 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.
