Just jealous. ;)

Doesn't suck for you. Since you'll still blindly lust over it (won't buy it of course because, credit cards). The rest of us will keep our faster bikes with very-slightly-only-marginally worse brakes.

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"One Line Robert"

I'm not buying anything in 2017 but I'll be sure to get your approval in 2018. Nice signature by the way.

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Make Inside Out Sports your next online tri shop! http://www.insideoutsports.com/

Yeah. We've heard you say that now - 1 or 483 times.

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"One Line Robert"

I'll remind you tomorrow to make it 484.

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Make Inside Out Sports your next online tri shop! http://www.insideoutsports.com/

'

Yes, we do have optimized rim brakes and wheels. But NOBODY knows how the use of rim brakes on the P5-X would have affected its performance. Cervelo's own engineers stated that it was always going to have disc brakes because....reasons. There are a ton of advancements in the P5-X frame and pretty much none of them can be attributed to having used disc brakes. I don't claim that it would have absolutely be faster with rim brakes, but to claim the opposite is nothing but bullshit, because no one knows.

If I remember correctly, I think they claimed the front end of the bike was not possible with rim brakes. Could they have done it with rim brakes? Possibly. That wasn't in the design scope though.

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Make Inside Out Sports your next online tri shop! http://www.insideoutsports.com/

So which is it? Disc brakes are awesome and faster or disc brakes were an arbitrarily mandated selection and we have no idea what benefit they had on the design? Seems you just admitted the latter and that's why this whole push by manufacturers chaps my ass. If they're faster, great! But nobody is even remotely proving that. We hear that forks can be designed better, front ends can be cleaner, etc, and yet we see a bike with 5 (?) years of development come out with a caliper system that looks like it bolted on after 5 minutes of thought the week before production.

Optimize the fork designs, improve the integration of the calipers, reservoirs (if hydraulic), and so on and THEN come try to convince me to spend well over $1000 replacing my current wheelset. Until then, stop trying to force discs down my throat as a solution to a problem that doesn't exist.

I've tried every road disc system currently on the market (and many that aren't yet), and I have yet to find one that works better for me than my rim brake setups. I can stop faster, both in wet and dry conditions, on 10 year old Tektro calipers with KoolStop pads on aluminum rims. At this point, the only disc system I would even consider is Shimano's hydraulics, but I have no compelling reason to spend that kind of money replacing everything for no real improvement...

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"I'm thinking of a number between 1 and 10, and I don't know why!"

HAHAHHAHAHA. No one is forcing this down your throat. No one is making you buy disc brakes....yet. The current problem that exists is carbon braking surfaces. If you think HED Jets are the best thing ever, then we can't even have a discussion on this.

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SPONSORSHIP only.

You should ride what you're the most comfortable with. I'd just be a bit careful projecting your personal experiences as a general truth.

You'll note that I did say "I have yet to find one that works better for me". While on the other hand there are lots of people who keep saying flat out that discs are superior.

While testing brakes, what I've observed is that the performance of disc brakes tends to fall off faster as the rider's weight increases, as compared to rim brakes. As a Clydesdale, I've seen that a brake that works better than a rim brake for a lighter rider doesn't work as well for me. This seems to fall in line with what several tandem companies like Santana and Rodriguez are saying, that discs aren't even acceptable on tandems. SRAM, when they first introduced their road discs, had a weight limit (I don't know if they still do). For the average cyclist or triathlete discs may very well be superior, but for heavier than average riders maybe not...

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"I'm thinking of a number between 1 and 10, and I don't know why!"

Cervelo, Diamondback, and Cannondale have all introduced flagship tri/TT bikes that were built with disc brakes as a choice complete disconnected from any aero benefit they might provide. That's not the industry trying to force disc brakes on the market?


Surely you can cite the massive number of crashes and injuries that have occurred in triathlons and time trials because of the insufficient braking power of rim brakes that prove carbon braking surfaces are a problem that needs to be solved, especially at the expense of aerodynamics.

1. No one said you had to buy the bike. You can buy a P5, P3, P2, etc.
2. Carbon braking surfaces are definitely a problem in regards to wet weather braking.
3. You honestly think those brands put disc brakes on bikes without thinking about the aero impact? Right......

I think you are forgetting that most people can only afford 1 bike. They train on that bike too and want better braking.

However, we can go around and around in circles about this.

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It's not all about safety or stopping power.

I'm not a fan of disc brakes on TT bikes. At least not yet.

But if I had to name the single biggest problem I've had with my TT bikes, it's been the brakes. They've kind of sucked in general, and they're not easy to clean or maintain. Vs. a standard pair of rim brakes. Talking mostly about the rear, but it also applies to some recent front rim brakes. Talking about the Speed Concept (rear brake overhaul article here). Felt DA. Cervelo P5. Internal cable routing out the bottom of a bottom bracket to a center pull rim brake is just never going to be great. Throw on top of that proprietary cowlings, proprietary cable housing bits, spacers, little set screws, and the fact that underneath the BB is generally a dirty place, and it it's not a fun thing to maintain.

As a roadie myself I wouldn't touch the rim brake Venge ViAS or Madone 9.9 with their complex proprietary calipers, magic doors, and doo-dads when I can get an S5 with Dura-Ace brakes that's just as aero. Maybe throw a TriRig brake on the front if I want to get all geeked out.

If I had to speculate about manufacturer intent, I suspect part of it is increasing dealer efficiency. Fewer people bringing their bikes in for a "brake tuneup" that's time consuming and requires specialized (no pun) mechanical knowledge. And happier customers who just want to ride their bikes and wipe them down and not have to followed detailed blogs about removing cowlings and adjusting set screws, etc.

That's how I feel about my mountain-bike with XT hydros. Always squealing, a bitch to keep clean and once there's contamination you can kiss the pads goodbye. In fact, I've been disinclined to ride it last weekend because the front (again) fails to stop properly and the rear is squealing like hell.

Now, I'm not some retro-grouch who wants rim brakes on his MTB - they're definitely the right tool for that application - and I can see myself getting a disc-brake CX bike. However, claiming that they're less maintenance than a good rim brake is rubbish, and even my Speed Concept's brakes are less intimidating than my MTB's.

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ZONE3 - We Last Longer

I said they're less maintenance than a bad rim brake, not a good one :)

I have much less experience maintaining disc brakes. So you could be right. But at least everything's right there in the open.

What the hell have you been doing on your mountain bike? XT has been bombproof and very low maintenance. All I had to do post Maui was replace the pads (that's after flying with the bike from AZ to Kona, unpacking + repacking, flying from Kona to Maui, unpacking + repacking, Maui to AZ)...

If it were my bike, I could tell you. Mine's been stolen, so I'm on a loaner from my coach. XT M775 tend to develop a leak at the caliper end of things. I've already replaced the rear caliper to a newer SLX after a few attempts to fix it, and now the front is on it's way out. The rear is squealing for no good reason, the pads have plenty of life in them. Probably some oily residue on the disc? No attempt to clean has been successful.

Not that my now-stolen XT M785s were all that great either. In the dusty season (IE, 9 months a year here) it would eat through pads and discs (despite frequent pad changes) alike. It seemed as if frequent cleaning only made things worse by driving dirt into the system?

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ZONE3 - We Last Longer

Absolutely true. But stop willfully ignoring the fact that getting the latest advances in design also means accepting a change that isn't tied to any of those advances.


And if that can provably happen with a net zero change in aerodynamics, great. There's no proof of that at all right now but plenty of people are claiming it anyway.


The Cervelo engineer explicitly said exactly that! Discs were dictated before development even started.

1. When they stop making butt ugly bikes like the Andean and that utterly hideous Cervelo..!
2. When disc brakes are the industry standard so that I can swap a wheel easily if needed
3. When they weigh less than rim brakes
4. When I can be 100% sure that I can set them so they they never rub but still work. (My MTB and Training/CX bike both have discs and this can be a pain in the ar$e) If my rim brakes rub it takes less than 5 seconds to fix
5. When Hydraulic brakes are readily available with Di2/ etc base bar shifters.

A while ago I wanted bike manufacturers to star making TT bikes with better Tri style geometry, they have now started doing this, but now have gone so far the other way that TT bikes look like they should be used more for touring holidays. Just add a rack and the P5X is the perfect bike for a camping trip.!

They spent 180 hours in the wind tunnel so I disagree with you saying they didn't care about the aero impact. Disc brakes were part of the design scope when the project started and the bike was designed with that in mind.

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Make Inside Out Sports your next online tri shop! http://www.insideoutsports.com/

You might hurt your back moving those goalposts. I never said they didn't care about the aero impact. I never said they didn't try to minimize the impact of disc brakes. I said the choice of discs was "disconnected from any aero benefit they might provide."

I'm not moving any goal posts.

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Make Inside Out Sports your next online tri shop! http://www.insideoutsports.com/