Please don’t make this a rim vs disc bloodfest. Stage 17 won with rim brake

[usr]

I'm fine with rim going the way of downtube shifters and mechanical groupsets going away. I just pray the same never happens to tubular tires! Clinchers are guaranteed to go flat and I hate carrying spare tubes, and tubeless...well too many horror storries of them blowing off rims, or otherwise exploding, for my comfort level!

I do wonder what's keeping "tubeless tubulars" from happening. Sure, you can't do the tube fallback, but sealant lore is full of "it's sooo much better with a naked tire than with a punctured tube", tubeless tubular seems almost like a nobrainer. Is it just lack of a good combined sewing/sealing process? Niche within a niche too small? Projected nonexistence of overlap between tubular conservatives and tubeless progressives? Tire companies generally being unwilling to do something their competitors haven't done already? Something entirely different?

[tomato]

The only reason tubulars didn't become extinct is because of professional racing.

Cyclocross racers might disagree.

[TobinHatesYou]

I do wonder what's keeping "tubeless tubulars" from happening. Sure, you can't do the tube fallback, but sealant lore is full of "it's sooo much better with a naked tire than with a punctured tube", tubeless tubular seems almost like a nobrainer. Is it just lack of a good combined sewing/sealing process? Niche within a niche too small? Projected nonexistence of overlap between tubular conservatives and tubeless progressives? Tire companies generally being unwilling to do something their competitors haven't done already? Something entirely different?

Tufo and others have tried before with vulcanized tires. The result was harsh, slow rolling products.

Challenge is trying again using tech more akin to tubeless. They're more-or-lesss coating a traditional cotton casing with liquid latex and letting it cure. But why? CX is seemingly the only sensible use-case for such a technology.

[Lewn777]

Just give us choice in the marketplace. I don't care what people ride or what they prefer, but manufacturers are practically all disc these days. A friend of mine bought a new Trek. He said he wanted rim brakes but the bike came only with disc. That probably means I'll probably keep my old bike for quite a while longer.

I bought an Orbea Gain e-road bike. Came with disc only, but since it has room for 40mm tires (came with 28s), I kinda like the flexibility of that, but I've had noise and rubbing problems with the brakes.

Problem is that choice hurts the manufacturers. You need two manufacturing processes and two separate supply chains, plus all the overhead to maintain two different sets of brakes. We can't blame the manufacturers for choosing one or the other. Just watch - eventually all the major manufacturers will only offer disc brakes, as the final holdouts (such as myself) eventually give in and go disc - it just hurts profitability too much to cater to an ever shrinking market for rim.

I'm fine with rim going the way of downtube shifters and mechanical groupsets going away. I just pray the same never happens to tubular tires! Clinchers are guaranteed to go flat and I hate carrying spare tubes, and tubeless...well too many horror storries of them blowing off rims, or otherwise exploding, for my comfort level!

I don't think choice does hurt manufacturers. It just stops them justifying a thousand dollar price increase because you've now got the latest and greatest vs old tech. Rim one $5000 but disk $6000. Hang on a minute, that's only $300 more of actual parts! Keep those pesky rim bikes off the sales floor to stop comparisons. Same game they have been playing for years. I

f that was the case why then invent Roubaix bikes, gravel bikes and 20 different types of MTB? 5 sizes of kids bikes, BMX bikes in four wheel sizes and now every kind of ebike? Why play musical MTB wheel sizes? 26er? 29er 27.5? 27.5 front 29er rear? oh wait, how about 32? Slaves lay up the carbon fibre in China and in most cases they are also assembled there too. Costs them nothing extra to offer rim. Many bikes are now even designed in China. Outsource it all and watch the money roll in. Remember to sponsor world tour teams to give your brand the right image though.

[TobinHatesYou]

You’re sort of contradicting yourself by saying brands have no issues offering choice, but then won’t offer the choice between rim brakes and disc brakes. Nothing is stopping them from marketing both as equal technologies for different tastes in that case. Nothing is stopping them from marking up both bikes to $6000 or continuing to offer rim brakes at a slight discount to encourage unit sales. This is what Trek, Specialized, Cannondale, Scott, etc. have all done up until the last year or so.

The answer to why rim brakes are going away is much more simple than that. The choice was offered for the better part of the last half decade. Consumers. Stopped. Buying. Rim brakes while there was still a choice.

TL;DR it became a waste of money. Trek can't even get rid of its rim-brake framesets amid the pandemic bike boom.

[MikeD]

You’re sort of contradicting yourself by saying brands have no issues offering choice, but then won’t offer the choice between rim brakes and disc brakes. Nothing is stopping them from marketing both as equal technologies for different tastes in that case. Nothing is stopping them from marking up both bikes to $6000 or continuing to offer rim brakes at a slight discount to encourage unit sales. This is what Trek, Specialized, Cannondale, Scott, etc. have all done up until the last year or so.

The answer to why rim brakes are going away is much more simple than that. The choice was offered for the better part of the last half decade. Consumers. Stopped. Buying. Rim brakes while there was still a choice.

I don't see where market changes driven by the pandemic are indicative of the way the market will be long term. Lots of first time buyers buying bikes. A lot of us long term cyclists stayed out of the market because of the long wait times, lack of supply, and high prices. Someone in my club ordered a new Trek and finally got it a whole year later! You can't tell me this market is normal.

[TobinHatesYou]

I don't see where market changes driven by the pandemic are indicative of the way the market will be long term. Lots of first time buyers buying bikes. A lot of us long term cyclists stayed out of the market because of the long wait times, lack of supply, and high prices. Someone in my club ordered a new Trek and finally got it a whole year later! You can't tell me this market is normal.

These changes were observed in 2017 when disc road sales overtook rim. It has nothing to do with the pandemic. If anything the pandemic is proving how bad the market is for rim-brake bikes as there's still, for example, last gen Emonda SLR H1/H2 framesets for sale.

[MikeD]

I don't see where market changes driven by the pandemic are indicative of the way the market will be long term. Lots of first time buyers buying bikes. A lot of us long term cyclists stayed out of the market because of the long wait times, lack of supply, and high prices. Someone in my club ordered a new Trek and finally got it a whole year later! You can't tell me this market is normal.

These changes were observed in 2017 when disc road sales overtook rim. It has nothing to do with the pandemic. If anything the pandemic is proving how bad the market is for rim-brake bikes as there's still, for example, last gen Emonda SLR H1/H2 framesets for sale.

Framesets are a hard sell. Since Shimano cracked down on internet suppliers (like from the UK) and fixed prices, the cost of components to the consumer has gone up. It's way more expensive to build up a bike from a bare frame and purchased components now than buying a complete bike.

I still think that the pandemic has caused an increase in shift to disc brakes, because there's an abnormal flood of newbies in the marketplace buying bikes right now, and new cyclists prefer disc brakes. I think long time cyclists are waiting for supply and demand to go back to normal, as I said before.

[usr]

Tufo and others have tried before with vulcanized tires. The result was harsh, slow rolling products.

Challenge is trying again using tech more akin to tubeless. They're more-or-lesss coating a traditional cotton casing with liquid latex and letting it cure. But why? CX is seemingly the only sensible use-case for such a technology.

Why? The claimed "nonono, if you experienced sealant not working inside a tube that's absolutely no reason to assume that it won't work in tubeless, the sealant recognizes the tube and refuses to seal". The tubeless rubber worm emergency plug market could be a huge tubular enabler. Add into the picture all the hassle of seating tubeless, leaky rim tapes from heavy tire lever action and random rim/tire disagreements. Glueing tubs seems tame in comparison. Add the light rims as a bonus.

But I guess I'm in the wrong bloodfest here, oops

[Lina]

I don't see where market changes driven by the pandemic are indicative of the way the market will be long term. Lots of first time buyers buying bikes. A lot of us long term cyclists stayed out of the market because of the long wait times, lack of supply, and high prices. Someone in my club ordered a new Trek and finally got it a whole year later! You can't tell me this market is normal.

These changes were observed in 2017 when disc road sales overtook rim. It has nothing to do with the pandemic. If anything the pandemic is proving how bad the market is for rim-brake bikes as there's still, for example, last gen Emonda SLR H1/H2 framesets for sale.

Framesets are a hard sell. Since Shimano cracked down on internet suppliers (like from the UK) and fixed prices, the cost of components to the consumer has gone up. It's way more expensive to build up a bike from a bare frame and purchased components now than buying a complete bike.

I still think that the pandemic has caused an increase in shift to disc brakes, because there's an abnormal flood of newbies in the marketplace buying bikes right now, and new cyclists prefer disc brakes. I think long time cyclists are waiting for supply and demand to go back to normal, as I said before.

With the price of current high end bikes it's a wash on buying a ready bike or building it yourself.

[cveks]

If "practically no one wants rim brakes" then why is rim/disc such a hot debate topic? In most discussion I see more people want rim still. The evidence is quite obvious.

Because a loud minority keeps malding about the loss of new rim brake bikes.

As opposed to the bullying and ridiculing group that thinks spending more on a disc brake bike makes them somehow superior, this is Weight Weenies and not Bloated-Bikes.com.

Remember it's not about the bike, the fittest person that brakes the least wins!

Halleluyah!

THIS

[MikeD]

I don't see where market changes driven by the pandemic are indicative of the way the market will be long term. Lots of first time buyers buying bikes. A lot of us long term cyclists stayed out of the market because of the long wait times, lack of supply, and high prices. Someone in my club ordered a new Trek and finally got it a whole year later! You can't tell me this market is normal.

These changes were observed in 2017 when disc road sales overtook rim. It has nothing to do with the pandemic. If anything the pandemic is proving how bad the market is for rim-brake bikes as there's still, for example, last gen Emonda SLR H1/H2 framesets for sale.

Framesets are a hard sell. Since Shimano cracked down on internet suppliers (like from the UK) and fixed prices, the cost of components to the consumer has gone up. It's way more expensive to build up a bike from a bare frame and purchased components now than buying a complete bike.

I still think that the pandemic has caused an increase in shift to disc brakes, because there's an abnormal flood of newbies in the marketplace buying bikes right now, and new cyclists prefer disc brakes. I think long time cyclists are waiting for supply and demand to go back to normal, as I said before.

With the price of current high end bikes it's a wash on buying a ready bike or building it yourself.

With the pandemic distorting the market, nothing said here today about the current price and availability of bikes and components is bound to be accurate after the return to normal. Until then, I'm not buying a new bike and will only fix what breaks or wears out as far as components go.

I believe there's going to be a dump of used bikes on the market when the pandemic is over from newbies that won't stick to the sport. Bike companies are going to have to contend with that.

[cveks]

5-7 years ago there were fewer disk-brake models than rim-disk ones. And yet, disks sold well and rims didn't - and manufacturers adopted to it by eventually phasing out rim brake models. Today, it would be a stupid business decision to invest into rim brakes - because there are too few people buying them. If there was more demand, you'd get tons of models right away. No demand, no models.

This is misleading though. People flocked to disc because it was presented by the industry as the new technology, with heavy implications that rim will be phased out. This was heavily reinforced by major teams using disc in the World Tour (marketing). Of course people aren't going to buy technology that will not be considered "cutting edge" and with lower resale value later on. There is no way rim sales could have kept up with this messaging.

It would have been a fairer comparison if the industry said clearly that "rim will continue to be used in the World Tour, and we will continue making and supporting rim as long as we have disc." Much like the choice between clincher/tubular/tubeless. But when you clearly say something is "old tech" and is on its way out, duh what do you expect.

Exactly.But look that from the bright side. We rim brake lowers smoke disc brake lovers because rim brake bikes goes faster 5-10% for the same wattage/weight.

[cveks]

You really had to be a "rim brake nut" to ignore all the warning signs and spend $$$$ buying a high-end rim brake bike at this point. I mean that's why I ended up buying two rim brake bikes at this time, because it was the end of an era.

End of an era is usually a good point to purchase something (same applies to cars, laptops etc). You usually get a completely developed product without any of the initial hiccups at 50% of the cost. Newer systems are usually more expensive to buy, harder to maintain, limited by proprietary parts and rich with additional features that are (still) error prone.

This is quite universal, but 100% applies to disc brake bike frames and groupsets. Over the years prices will drop, compatibility increase, knowledge on maintenance improve, issues evened out etc.

Nearly each car/bike/component manufacturer goes through the same stage with each engine/large component update (good examples are Volswagen TSI's or PSA engines). They'll improve to the point there's limit margin and they need to invent a new generation where I'd always skip the first couple of batches/series.

Exactly.

The tolerance for clearance between a rim and a rim brake pad is approximately 3mm. Whereas that of a disc brake rotor is considerably smaller at around 0.5mm. Therefore, if a rotor is ever misaligned, damaged or bent, there's much less free space before the brake pads start to rub.

Thus happens all the time in pro peloton according to Chris Froome and if even best bike mechanics cant solve it what hope does have average weekend warrior?

Riding road disc bike = wasting watts for nothing. Thats how I see it.

[tomato]

We rim brake lowers smoke disc brake lovers because rim brake bikes goes faster 5-10% for the same wattage/weight.

You really are dellusional. If rim brakes were 5-10% faster than disc brakes, there would not be a single pro rider using disc brakes.