Dunno maybe I’m an outlier, but I got a new bike more than a year ago and so far have not touched the disk brakes at all. They just worked flawlessly for the entire time.
I see now that the pads are down, so need to exchange them. But that’s about it for maintenance.
4 Likes
I don’t have discs on my bike but then again have nothing against them either…however, I would think a 7 time grand tour winner knows more about it than any of us! 
5 Likes
You never change wheel sets? I have at least a race day and training day wheel set for road and MTB. My road bike accepts wider tires, this means an additional gravel wheel set. Welcome to bye-bye easy maintenance. Rotors wear differently, hub tolerances are different. And pros like CF change their wheel sets constantly. I’d say context is imporant here. Rim breaks were more forgiving in this context.
1 Like
Not necessarily, there is a massive element of tradition and doing things the old way in all walks of life.
He has valid points but if we think about the changes in training/materials/lifestyle from the 70s (for example) and it means just because you are a pro it doesn’t mean you are the fount of all knowledge.
4 Likes
+1
It is important that world class cyclists are not world class on bike tech, at least not by default.
Most pros have ridden rim brakes for the majority of their lives, so they have more than enough experience to ride a rim brake bike safely in any condition.
A lot of their choices are based on what they are used to and what feels good to them. That probably also explains the lack of deep section wheels in almost all of pro racing (even in the Tour of Flanders, they raced on shallow wheels, despite the extremely high average speed and the long flat part at the end). It‘s not that aero wheels don‘t work, they just might not feel as good/ save/ familiar to most world tour pros.
In the GCN asks World Tour Bike mechanics videos, several of them explain, that „the climbing bike isn’t even lighter by much, it just feels better to a lot of our pros“…
Nope. just one Wheelset. BTW there is a solution for fitting different wheels to the same bike:
2 Likes
This does not help with different wear of rotors. And with different wear of pads.
And these spacers are for people with too much spare time, I actually tried them years ago.
Some googling found an CylingTips review of a pre-production model. The reviewer noticed flex (he said in the frame). It’s not that surprising from a bike that’s supposed to be light.
I passed this feedback onto the team at Factor and was told that they’d received similar feedback from the Israel Start-Up Nation team. As a result, the production version of the Ostro will be stiffer than the sample I tested.
So perhaps that’s not been fully addressed, or couldn’t be without adding too much weight. Of course it’s easy to misinterpret flex in one place with somewhere else, so who knows if the handlebar is the culprit? But 300g for a bar and stem is light (not boutique German kinda lightness), but impressively light.
My point referring to his FTP is that if he can sit at 420w for prolonged periods, what would power would he be putting out standing or in a hard acceleration? Quite a lot I’d wager. The bars are used for leverage and stability during these efforts too, not just for sprinting!
1 Like
Ah right. Too bad. Seems like having only one wheelset is double effective: on the wallet AND the nerves 
no necessarily, I used to have a dedicated road bike and a cylocross bike (pre-gravel bike times). These days only one racey gravel bike, with three wheel sets. Sweet wheel sets. Breaking the vicious n+1 cycle 
1 Like
<MTB’r checks thread>
Wonders what all the fuss is whilst trying to remember something called rim brakes 
<MTB’r checks out>
6 Likes
oh haha. I guess it’s the era of “one bike to rule them all”
i must’ve lucked out, because i have a cross bike that i swap wheelsets on (one for road one for gravel/cross) and it’s honestly been pretty flawless. I put one shim onto a centerlock disc to line up the caliper and the discs have been the solid part whenever i swap wheels around. totally different hub and rim manufacturers too
the fact that i just said ‘luck’ though means that there should probably be a standard that reputable, quality manufacturers can hit though, we shouldn’t be relying on luck when we have the skills and know-how to make things reliably!
2 Likes
“…so long as you’re okay with your rims being a consumable item.”
1 Like
I run 3 different wheel sets on my CX bike and 2 on my road, all disc. They’re all swap-n-go. At most, when I pull a wheelset off, I’ll push the pads back a bit, but that’s it. Literally takes less than a minute to swap wheels and never have disc problems.
The wheel sets are 2 Bontrager, 2 Hunt, and a Light Bicycle set. All are Shimano rotors but different models.
When racing you choose the equipment that’s best at the selection point though. In Flanders, that’s going to be punching up a short cobbled hill at about 800w which is why you’d want light weight. That would be my approach anyway. For a race like Roubaix I’d be more interested in aero.
1 Like
Chris hire me as your bike mechanic and I promise I will get rid of your disc rub. 
Why they choose a depth rim also has to do with sponsors. One sponsors 60+ might handle like garbage in heavy cross wind so riding shoulder to shoulder maybe it’s a no brainer to go with a 30 something mm rim height. Also, depending on the tarmac, maybe as much as they ride, a shallower rim saves more energy over xx amount of time being less stiff. Anywho, I don’t ride with a ton of pros but, the ones I do this has been something they chit chat about.
I’m the same…maybe it’s dumb luck, but, I have two sets of wheels for the road bike. A DT Swiss 60+ and the stock Syncros 30+ both with the same rotors and they line up perfect. With that said, from time to time for no apparent reason, I’ll get some rotor rubbing. Most likely user error but, just evidence for how tight the tolerance is. To be fair, I had some single cam rim brakes that were 10X more PITA to keep set up perfectly so…
You want light weight because you feel it would be good. But the maths suggests it doesn’t matter.
This obviously isn’t the most scientific tool, but the suggestions it gives aren‘t the worst.
I looked up the elevation gain for Ronde van Vlaandere and it is around 2000m total. Looking at the course, I guesstiamted that around half of that is raced and steep hills, and the other half is rolling and doesn’t really slow riders down too much.
So I assumed just over 1000m of climbing at 12% grade being ridden at 600W, and assumed a given rider (lighter than WVA and MVDP) and bike (typical road bike weight+bottles+team broadcast). If you went for Set Up A vs Set Up B, the latter being 300g heavier (which is a typical difference between 35-40mm and 60-65mm wheels), you can save a total of 6 seconds or 2.3 watts with the lighter set up during the climbs. That assumes that you have zero gain from aerodynamics on these climbs.
Given the race usually has long solo/duo breakaways and a sprint finish, I guess deeper wheels (saving around 4 to 8 Watts at 45kph) would be the way to go…
Base: 600W, 1000m climbing, 12% grade, 75kg rider, 9kg bike (all in)
Added 300g to the bike, same power.
Added 300g to the bike, adjusted power so that the speed is equal.
1 Like