Pros and Cons of Rim Brakes vs. Disc Brakes

I was on the fence for a long time; upgrade my BB5's to BB7's or to hydraulics? Thankfully, I found an unparalleled deal on a OE takeoff set of XT M775's and I've been happy as a clam ever since. I haven't done ANYTHING to my brakes in six months - nothing. My Shimano hydraulic's have been way less maintenance than fiddling with Avid CPS washers and adjusting inner and outer pads every few rides.

I love the feel and power of my M775's - glad to have gotten over my worries about hydraulics and to have moved away from Avid mechanical brakes. On the other hand, if you get cheap hydro's with no bite-point adjustment, no reach adjustment, and semi-metallic pads that scrape, squeal and turkey-gobble all the time, I'm sure that BB7's could look pretty good. Not quite so many people are dumping NICE hydro's to go back to BB7's.

I've also got rim brakes on my vacation bike. They're light and cheap and they just work with no drama or fuss. Besides feel and bling-factor, mud and downhills are the only reasons not to just stick with rim brakes IMO. All road bikes have rim brakes after all. I don't do a lot of mud or big downhills so, honestly, more than for any practical reason, I have hydro disks mainly because they feel and look frickin' cool.

Snagged7 said:

I'm trying to stay away from having to do a lot of maintenance with the brakes. I don't know a lot but figured the rim brakes would be much lower maintenance than disc brakes would be. Is this a true assumption or do I have it wrong? Also, what are the pros and cons to both setups?

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This gets talked about a lot. Do a search.

I find that something like bb7s are no more maintenance than v-brakes. Some hydraulics can be even less maintenance (virtually none) if they work the way they are supposed to, though when there is a problem they can be loads of hassle.

I think v's work pretty well, and if set up right (including good cables and pads) are about as powerful as most 160mm discs I've tried. However, discs are far more consistent in the wet, are not affected by a rim going out of true, and deal with extended downhill better, because they are far less susceptible to fading when hot. Overall they just work better, IMO.

As far as I can tell, the main advantage to v's are that they are generally lighter, and generally cheaper than discs.

I have had two mtbs for a number of years. I ran v's on the HT for a number of years and disc on the FS, and while I preferred the discs, I never really minded the v's. It was definitely not worth buying a whole new wheelset over. It was not until I needed new wheels that I went with disc.