Everyone chooses their own path. For some people putting a dropped chain back on is too much to learn, and for others fixing a puncture, adjusting gears or using tubeless tyres. Personally i want to be self-sufficient at home and on the trail/road and I’m willing to invest a bit of time learning how to get the most out of my gear. It’s an important skill, particularly for big rides and multi-day races and once you get up to speed it’s not much more difficult or time consuming than anything else. Not to mention the performance gains.
As for the OP’s question, to me it would make much more sense to invest in current technology, but again each to their own.
same here, I’ve owned 2 disc brake bikes (mtn and road) over the last 7 years and annual maintenance is paying the bike shop to bleed the lines. I replace the pads and rotors myself, almost as simple as replacing rim brake pads.
I’m a big guy (over 90kg) and on the road go thru pads and rotors a little faster than smaller folks. To scrub speed on descents I’ve ridden my brakes down switchbacks in the Sierra mountains, to the point the brakes were howling from the heat. And never once had a problem with warping - that has happened but only when my bike fell over and the rotor hit the curb (and LBS fixed with a Park Tool tuning fork looking tool).
I’m in a club with over 600 people and only heard of problems with rim brakes and carbon wheels. What works and what doesn’t travels fast in a large club with pre-pandemic rides of 50+ people.
Not saying there aren’t problems with disc brakes, only that in my club riding experience disc brake issues are uncommon versus say people having problems with overheating carbon wheel brake tracks on rim brake bikes.
Its all personal preference, and I’ll simply say in my experience disc brakes have a higher annual operating cost (the annual brake bleed).
My maintenance gripe with disc brakes is that they’re SIGNIFICANTLY more costly to maintain when they go wrong. I’ve probably spent over $1,000 in replacing broken brake components on my two race bikes by this point in my cycling journey. Not to mention hydraulic disc setups cost more to start with. I don’t think I’ve ever replaced anything besides pads and cables on my rim brake bikes. So for some bikes, like my Surly CrossCheck or my road bike I MUCH prefer the simplicity of rim brakes. However, I do agree that discs are better performing so I don’t hesitate to run them on my mountain bike or cyclocross bike.
The rim width thing is interesting. Enve’s AR wheels have a wider internal width (25mm) than their gravel wheels (G23 are 23mm which is the same as a rim brake Hed Belgium+ among a number of others).
I’m a big fan of industries move toward wider internal width wheels but one thing you have to remember is that wider internal widths give the tire a wider/different shape which usually results in more contact area. This is often beneficial, however if that tire was designed around a 19mm internal width rim than putting it on a 25mm internal width rim means the tread pattern that is now in contact with the ground may be different the. What the manufacturer intended. For some tires/tread patterns may not be a big deal. For others it can change the grip, ride quality, and rolling resistance
Agreed.
My 3T wheels are the road-focussed equivalent to the gravel wheel set I mentioned with an inner rim width of “only” 25 mm. In case of 3T, one of the motivations to increase rim width is to increase the outer rim width for aero gains. They certainly make tires blow up. I have 26 mm P Zeros on my rims right now, but they are wider than 28 mm, I reckon.
You correctly say that wider rims change the tire shape. I’d add that for off road tires is much more variety when it comes to intended tire shape. My Maxxis TreadLites are much more squarish, for example, because this maximizes the contact patch for tires with essentially zero tread. Other offroad tires are rounder. They frequently have a more pronounced ridge in the middle. I’m just mentioning this, because this applies to gravel tires to some degree as well.
Answering the question asked rather than entering the disc brake debate: I grabbed a second-hand canti Trek Crockett frame to build up a cheap gravel bike mostly using spare road parts I already had and it does the job.
I run 38mm Vittoria Terrano Dry tyres and don’t think I could go any bigger (tight clearance on the drive-side chainstay). Wheels are just spare alloy road wheels a mate gave me and they’re fine. I’ve ridden them pretty hard on my local mountain bike trails (I mtb a fair bit as well) and they are still straight. No point running wider rims since they’d just widen the tyre profile and the frame doesn’t have the clearance.
rotors go out of true
pads not retracting evenly
pad to rotor rubbing
pads that howled like no tomorrow and scared children for miles around. they were actually great for clearing people off a trail.
disc brakes that went flat over the winter and needed to be rebled
brakes that couldn’t be rebled (SRAM).
The bike industry has moved on, many groupsets are not offered with rim brakes. Sticking to rim brakes is akin to sticking to friction shifters in my mind.
Seems you are speaking from a lack of personal experience. My experience with hydraulic rim and disc brakes is that the latter need far less maintenance.
My wife currently rides a bike with hydraulic rim brakes. I don’t think the brakes have been bled more than once in 15+ years.
Replacing disc brake pads likewise isn’t any more complicated or takes longer than replacing rim brake pads.
Also, rim brakes are not “ready to go every time”. Riding buddies with rim brake bikes that own aluminum training wheels and fancy carbon wheels have to change brake pads when they change from one wheelset to the other. They also have to adjust the brakes whenever they do. Likewise, you need to readjust your rim brakes as the brake pads wear. Hydraulic disc brakes adjust automatically.
Bleeding is a non-issue either: I have my bikes checked out in a bike shop once a year, and I have them bleed the brakes amongst other things. And I ride a lot.