I am puzzled as to how you concluded Grant thinks disc brakes are "better." That is a vague term in the best of scenarios; given the various points and counterpoints brought up in the post, it seems more your preconceived conclusion than Petersen's opinion in the piece. "Disc brakes are fine, but if the bike could speak for itself, it might request a rim brake" Is about as close to any definitive statement on one vs. the other as he is willing to give here. In any case, I think your summary misses the forest for the trees.
I also don't think he views the fact that wheels can get wobbly and that can rub against a rim brake as something inherently "wrong" with the design of the rim brake itself. You could just as easily lay that on the wheel. It's just a fact that wheels can go out of true and rub on brake pads. You can use it as a warning to take a look at your wheel tension. He merely offers this and the fact that heat might pop a tube or wet and muck can affect braking as potential advantages to discs, not as things "wrong" with rim brakes. (BTW, I live in a hilly area, never heard of or saw a tube pop from overheated rim. But our hills are not as long as the ones out West.) Just as frames had to be beefed up for discs, you could potentially design a tube that can withstand the temps, or a wheel that does not go out of true. But since these are not really problems per se so much as things that sometimes (rarely in the case of popped tubes) happen. Just as if you accidentally get grease or lube spray on your discs. On Friday, May 13, 2016 at 4:09:29 PM UTC-4, Bill Lindsay wrote: > > I disagree that Grant's BLUG post is against disc brakes at all, much less > adamantly against them. My summary of Grant's BLUG post is: > > - Rim brakes are adequate for most applications, and get a bad rap from > the majority of the bicycle world in 2016 > - Disc brakes are better, but most riding applications don't require them > - Rim brakes have three things wrong with them, and we're stuck with them > - Disc brakes have two things wrong with them, but both of those problems > have been solved > - The bike of the future won't be mechanically understood by riders as > well as the bikes of the past were, and that's kind of a bummer > > Note that the forthcoming Rivendell tandem will have at least one disc > brake. > > Bill Lindsay > El Cerrito, CA > -- 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 [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/rbw-owners-bunch. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
