controversial video coming up disc brakes it's 20 21 disc brakes have been on road bikes for a few
years now why is it still such a polarizing topic should you be buying a bike with disc brakes on
or avoiding it the information can be a little bit confusing if you've just come
into cycling in today's video i want to explain the shifter disc brakes and my experience with
them a little bit later on how do you tackle this mess of a topic let's break it down
first up let's quickly go through the basics the most common types of brakes that you're
going to find on road bikes are disc brakes and rim brakes rim brakes are usually cable operated
and they are a horseshoe shaped caliper with pads in for these pads to work you need a wheel with
a braking surface on it when you pull your brake lever these pads rub against the braking surface
cause friction and make you slow down disc brakes on the lower end are usually cable
operated and the higher end ones are hydraulics in this video we're going to be mainly focusing
on hydraulic setups because that's what you see on most road bikes but i am going to touch
on cable discs later on in the video because it's worth chatting about briefly disc brakes
have a much smaller caliper and it's usually attached to your fork and your rear chain stay
the pads are hidden inside and when you squeeze your brake lever they rub against a disc which
is an extra part that's attached to the inside of your wheel now pros and cons of each of these
they look nice okay this is subjective but people like tradition and don't really like change
sometimes they are lightweight compared to their disc brake counterparts they are easy to maintain
you can see them in front of you so you can keep tabs on how worn your pads are if you do need to
change them it is one tiny little screw which you can undo with an allen key and then you slide the
pads out slide new ones in you might have to fiddle with a barrel adjuster to adjust cable
tension and then you can generally align them by hand by just pulling the caliper side to side it's
nice and fast changing a wheel you can use the caliper and the dropouts in the fork to align it
as you put the wheel in so bike races quite like them for this reason if you've got carbon wheels
and a carbon braking surface the braking power leaves a lot to be desired especially if it's wet
or you're a heavier rider or you're carrying loads of bike packing luggage when you brake you heat
up your wheels therefore your tire therefore the inner tube inside and inner tubes have been known
to explode in extreme circumstances there are some light in a tube manufacturers that advise
against using them in room brake bikes too and the last one which is the biggest con in my opinion
your braking surface is your wheel so every time you're braking you're wearing out your wheel set
superior braking performance this is the main pro for disc brakes this is why mountain bikers and
off-road cyclists use them they stop well good they're also less affected by wet conditions
they're less affected by overheating problems they can get very hot but you don't have the same
issues of exploding stuff there's less recurring maintenance generally if you look after your bike
and get it serviced regularly then it's generally a fit and forget situation with hydraulics at
least you end up having to bleed brakes a lot less often than you would have to change a cable if you
had a rim brake system less force is required at the lever end to squeeze and get the braking
power that you need so on long steep descents your hands fatigue less you have that whole one
finger breaking thing in mountain biking so they're very very strong getting a wheel on
and off can be fiddly they're more expensive than their rim brake counterparts they're harder to fix
if they do go wrong if you have a problem with them and you need to re-bleed them
you need a bleed kit probably more tools than the average person has in their home tool kit
truing a disc rotor can also be quite tricky but if you have the choice between two similar bikes
one with disc and one with rim then which one should you go for here's my take on it
for regular bike riders who buy their own stuff i think discs make more sense instead of wearing out
your wheels you're wearing out a disc rotor which is like 30 quid instead of 300 pounds to rebuild a
wheel or even 500 pounds to replace a whole wheel some of the main arguments i've seen against disc
brakes have been quite racing oriented some pro cyclists really like rim brakes still and they're
still winning races on them but you are not a pro cyclist probably you don't get new wheels whenever
you need them you don't get new pads before every race you don't get a fully serviced and checked
over bike before every race and exclusively ride top end equipment of course the performance of rim
brakes and the pro peloton is going to be good admittedly though you need to assess the kind
of riding that you're doing if you live in the netherlands and don't have any hills the choice
isn't as important but if you live in the lake district and you're constantly riding down 20
gradients for a long time on the brakes because you have to be and it rains all the time because
we're in the uk you definitely will be at a disadvantage on rim brakes i've seen it firsthand
we went to the lake district as a group together last year and the guys on rim brakes really really
struggled even though their competent first cat elite bike riders it makes a huge difference if
you're on steep stuff you're bike packing you're a heavier rider it's raining a lot think about
what kind of riding you're going to be doing now i might as well put as much information as
possible in this video on the topic of disc brakes so here are some points that i didn't cover before
one cable operated discs are crap i've never had a good experience with them everybody i've spoken
to and has used them has also had a terrible experience the force that you need to apply to
the levers is just so so much it's basically like using a cable rim brake but on a tiny tiny wheel
so the force just isn't enough they feel spongy the modulation is terrible and the cables stretch
really fast and the maintenance is just as bad as a rim brake not all is lost though if you've
got a cable disc brake bike you can actually buy a thing made by trp which is a caliper
that has a small reservoir of hydraulic fluid in it and drastically improves how
your brakes perform it's a great halfway point and definitely cheaper than having to replace
your levers and hoses and everything as well if i can find it i will link it down below
when choosing brake pads for your disc brakes there are two main options resin and metallic
or sintered generally the resin ones stop you better it's a softer compound but it does wear out
really quickly so if you live in a place like the uk where it rains loads and the roads are
dirty or if you're mountain biking and doing cross-country where the rides are long you're
gonna burn through brake pads really quickly if you're using the resin ones i would suggest
having used them both metallic seems to be a more sensible option they don't perform quite as well
as resin but they definitely outperform rim brakes by a long way a bit of a can of worms here won't
be appropriate for everybody but if performance is the thing that you're focused on then there
has been some argument over how aerodynamic disc brakes are compared to their rim brake
counterpart for this segment i got in touch with my friends and aerodynamic experts at aerocoach
and this is what they had to say you're comparing apples and oranges you can't directly compare
a room break bike to a disc brake bike because the shape of them is different companies are now so
focused on their disc brake models that new bikes are just faster anyway so you can't really compare
them directly to old rim brake models apparently there are benefits when designing a bike to be as
aero as possible with a disc brake system because of the way the hoses are routed so that might
explain why bikes are getting quicker and quicker just to see they actually tested two of the same
model bikes one with rim brakes and one with disc brakes they were both cevallo p5s in the same size
and they found negligible difference but the disc brake one was faster with the bottle attachment
on it their suggestion was to go with the one with discs anyway because the difference was negligible
and you'd have the added confidence of being able to use disc brakes on a type of bike that
doesn't generally handle that nicely anyway so having good working brakes makes a difference in
a race to conclude this video the bike industry does some weird stuff usually it's pushing bikes
that are way too race oriented for the average customer but in the case of disc brakes i think it
might be backwards and i think they honestly may benefit consumers more than pro races unless you
really like changing your wheel fast that marks the end of today's video if you enjoyed it please
leave a thumbs up and a comment down below and subscribe to this channel for more i'd be
interested to hear your thoughts and experiences with this breaks in the comment section
down below let me know what you think while i personally think discs are better for consumers
i do think both systems have their merits thank you again for watching stay tuned for the next one