Disc Brakes: The Biggest Marketing Gimmick On 2 Wheels? (The Ultimate Rim Vs Disc Comparison.)

Time Stamps

0:00 Intro.
1:13 Price.
2:44 On costs.
8:33 Weight.
10:03 Looks.
11:33 Aerodynamics.
14:29 Maintenance. 
20:08 Convenience.
23:22 Frame design.
27:27 Sound.
27:42 Braking Dry and Wet. 
44:32 Safety.
48:20 End.

⚠️ Things that were cut from the video to save time:

1️⃣ I mentioned the old rim brake bikes could only take small tyres. (23-25mm) People complain that they want to fit fatter tyres to their “road bikes.” Well my answer to that is modern road rim frames can take 28s or even 30mm with no issue. My steel Cinelli nemo for example. If you need biger than that then you don’t need a road bike. You need a gravel bike and then disc brakes would make sense! If you want to go fast you need thinner tyres. (Video to come!)

2️⃣ I forgot to include the clip of pro cyclists on disc brakes sliding all over the road in wet weather. The footage can be found in the Rim vs Disc play list. The fact they had “more braking power” was useless.

3️⃣ A lot of people use the “drum brakes” argument to insinuate that rim brakes are outdated just as drum brakes were on cars. They say things like: “you wouldn’t have drum brakes on your modern, would you?” Not only have I driven modern cars with drum brakes, but if you do your research you will discover electric cars that are faster and heavier than most current cars will be fitted with drum brakes in the future. The issue with drum brakes was never they didn’t have enough stopping power, the issue was control. Now we have electronically controlled breaks. Its the same issues with disc, disc isn’t safer without ABS and electronic safety measures. 

Thank you for watching my video.

I will have a disc vs rim playlist available on my page for all the YouTube videos i clipped.

"I'll give you my rim brakes when you pry them from my cold, dead hands.”

If you have any questions just ask in the comments and I will get back to you.

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Safe riding,

Reg.

[zaub]

Ahhh I love it! 48 minutes of confirmation bias telling me I was right all along... Enjoyed every minute of it!

[ChadEE]

MOUNTAIN BIKER"S TAKE: The argument for rim brakes only works for road bikes. I've been trashing trails since the 90's. Every trail ride the rim gets dust, dirt, mud, sand, or snow on them, which effects descents / cornering when using rim brakes. Learning the modulation for each brake is critical to building muscle memory. Once I went to discs, my braking performance and maintenance got 1000x' better. The rim brake during the dry summer months is good, but once the trails get moist...it is mission impossible keeping the grime out of the housing (road grime too). Once grime gets in there, both housing and cable need to replaced. Not to mention the sanding affect on the rims and pads. I have concaved several rims and finding the same sized rim to reuse the spokes is not always easy. And I do clean the braking surfaces after each ride. I think many gravel riders would have a similar opinion. The rough terrain and chain lube is a serious issue too. With the chain bouncing, droplets of lube gets on the rear drive-side rim and causes me to press the lever even harder. Just my experience.

[amanahmed]

i just returned from the 8th Tour of Asir in Saudi Arabia. i was the main mechanic there. my whole day was spent aligning disc brake calipers& rotors, bleeding Sram and Shimano brakes. i had to carry both bleed kits. couldnt mix Dot and Mineral stuff. punctures galore-we had 32 this year and a really nasty single -rider crash. 67-strong peloton. i had an asst. mechanic. i made sure he had a 6mm Allen key in his pocket for wheel removal and reinstall. brake disc rotors overheating on those long hot descents. brakes squealing and screeching, brake disc rub... God forbid, you accidently touched the rotor while replacing tubes on-the-go(no spare wheels either-there'd be too many to carry due to different types(10s, 11s, 12s-rim brake, disc brake, different rotor sizes too). lest i forget, rounded off allen key hole on one of the thru-axles, a guy who forgot his axle in Riyadh and we couldn't get the correct thread pitch. he rode the Tour on a borrowed trainer thru-axle which left the trainer extra-long axle ends jutting out on both sides!

[DavidSmith-gjdm]

After 50 years in the saddle, I’m sticking with rims, unless I’m mistaken when any mechanical system becomes more complex , your more in the hands of specialists . For most of us, it’s the self maintenance that makes cycling reachable to most people, ultimately more enjoyable & environmently friendly, the more recent “advancements “ have taken that away from most consumers . History might view these advancements in a different light, more of a marketing hype & a step sideways . K.I.S.S, “keep it simple stupid !” Great video, benchmark for brake systems.

[holben]

I got into cycling in 2019 and my first bike was disc, you are 100% correct. The feeling of betrayal when I borrowed my friends rim brake allez was crazy. I felt like I'd been gaslit into thinking cycling had to be an expensive hobby if you wanted even baseline performance.

[richardsutton]

We should have the choice but I don’t believe disc brakes on a road bike are necessary. It’s very wrong that the major brands won’t offer the rim brake option

[RrR__RrR]

The only problem with rim brakes is that they make your expensive carbon rim a consumable item.
I still love my rim brakes though!

[evandackers]

I stopped watching when you started greatly exaggerating the maintenance costs of disc brakes. I’ve had disc brakes for 5 years, replaced discs once and pads once. Total spend: approx NZ$250. Never had to re-bleed them. Never had to replace the hydraulic fluid. Had to centre the callipers once when I bought new wheels - took less than a minute to do both.
It’s like you’re comparing the absolute worst case scenario with disc brakes to the absolute best case scenario with rim brakes.

[disasturd]

Reginald Is 100% spot on. I'm a pro mechanic, so I work on bikes all day that belong to people with less knowledge of brake system care, and 9 times out of 10 when I TR a customer bike before a tuneup, the bikes with disc systems have less braking power than the ones with rim brakes, because rim brakes fare better over time with little to no maintenance than disc brakes. The average consumer doesn't own a bleed kit and seems to have a hard time not contaminating their brake surfaces. I own some bikes with rim brakes and some with disc, and they both have their place. I love having disc brakes on my carbon gravel wheels, but I hate that my new $7000 carbon gravel bike isn't much lighter the ones I was riding 20 years ago because of it. I definitely don't think disc brakes are an advancement, and I absolutely know that bike manufacturers got a lot of people to throw perfectly great rim brake bikes aside and buy new disc equipped bikes on the premise that it was an advancement.

[Havreflan]

Recently found your channel, and as a functional minimalist who wants less maintenance and more value for my money (my bike is a tool more than anything) I can vibe with a lot of your videos. Great content!

[TheRickysee]

I think this is my new favorite channel. Impeccable breakdown. What do we do now? The industry won’t go back

[Mauriceweller]

I have like 5 friends who are into road cycling, we are all around 15-16 years old and all of them love disc brakes and keep hating me for liking rim brakes😂, because they just take their bikes into a bike shop and never want to deal with anything. I am the only one who does his own maintenance, my dad is really good at fixing literally anything and he taught me how to fix everything on a bike myself. Me and my dad used to ride rims for many years, now we both got a road and a cyclocross bike with disc brakes. Since we go by the mentality of just figuring out ourselves we were really frustrated so many times doing disc brake maintenance. It just isn’t straightforward as a rim brake system. We trashed 3 pairs of relatively new pads and one rotor just because of contamination. I once wanted to change my handlebars to a new carbon one piece and it was a nightmare, brake fluid everywhere in the garage, had to go to my LBS 3 times for just disc brake components and that itself cost me 50€. I am now looking for a used bike with rim brakes but sadly even on the used market there isn’t a lot of options. I just wish that the manufacturers would give the option at least. Great video!

[GoustiFruit]

I bought my first bike with disc brakes in 2015. Still rolling today as good as ever. All I ever do was to change the pads, maybe twice along the years, with super cheap ones from aliexpress. When I bought that bike, I also bought a kit to purge/change the oil. I never used it, it must be somewhere hidden in the back of a cupboard. So, I have all the benefits of disc brakes, with no problem, and the cheapest maintenance possible.

[EnricoGaletta]

I watched the whole video, one word wise! Great great job. Everyone that drove both systems knows the truth IF use their own head to think and trust their own feelings. Despite big companies production, at least all main elite frames producers keep offering rim brakes bikes.

[nicklaz]

Thanks for making an honest and common sense video. New subscriber here.

[stibra]

Peter Sagan got 1M EUR to ride first disc brake bike in the race

[chuchuchip]

Best comparison video I've seen on YouTube about the brake discussion.

[JonathanBays]

Great complete video discussion. I think you nailed it. Disc brakes were all marketing like printers and ink

[dylf]

Having ridden rim and disc and taken all 50 minutes of "data" in the video into account, I'm still not convinced that I should go back to buying rim bikes. This issues you're experiencing with disc have not affected me and I've only had better stopping in wet and dry weather. Emergency stopping has been a lot faster as well.

[keitmo]

I'm an all-weather rider in the Seattle area (a.k.a. the Pacific NorthWET). I switched to disc brakes because I was tired of treating rims as a consumable that had to be replaced yearly, sometimes more often. The initial extra cost of a disc-equipped bike is more than offset by the reduce ongoing maintenance costs. Getting new wheels built every year gets expensive!