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Old 02-09-2019, 01:09 PM
zmalwo zmalwo is offline
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Join Date: Oct 2018
Location: New York, NY
Posts: 1,440
Just realized the irony of disc brakes on an aero bike.

I rarely have these genius moments but this is for sure one of them. The whole purpose of an aero bike is to use them on flat stages where constant speed is high enough that the aero advantage of aero tubes offsets the weight penalty, and the purpose of disc brakes are to avoid overheating of carbon brake tracks on mountain stages where lots of braking take take place. If an aero bike is not used on mountain stage, then caliper brakes would offer better aero gain than disc brake, as well as reducing overall weight close to 6.8kg as aero bikes rarely make to that light. But since everything in the bike industry is about marketing and forced gear retirement, the manufactures probably don't want you to know this. One can argue that discs offer better braking in wet weather, but with recent year pads and brake track improvement I highly doubt discs even offer that much better braking performance.
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