New bike question

[sokyroadie]

I am getting close in the queue for a Ti Medium reach frame - I have a new Whisky Med reach fork and was planning on either TRP RG957 or Velo Orange Medium reach calipers (black). I have the TRP brakes on another Medium reach Seven and they are fine. Should I consider the Paul Medium reach Racers or go with the VO brakes (easier to find). I was originally going to use the Black TRP brakes from the Seven, but decided to keep the Seven also.

The Paul's would need to be the center mount - decisions decisions

TIA

No way do I want or need a disc road bike

[Peter P.]

Get the sidepulls. No need to install cable hangers, as with centerpull brakes and plenty of stopping power.

I'd sooner buy a set of old Universal centerpull brakes, or Weinman. Paul's are just plain ugly to me.

Also, I don't know whether the Paul's have a pull ratio that requires a specific brake lever, but you have several choices with dual pivot levers. I prefer the hood shape of Cane Creek levers.

[lafish]

Personally, I think the Pauls look cool, but I have the Velo Orange Gran Cru on one of my bike and I like them quite a lot. Good stopping power, good modulation, plenty of clearance. And no muss no fuss to install.

[mhespenheide]

Just an opinion, but the Racer Medium don't really gain you anything over modern medium-reach sidepulls while they add the complexity of needing to add another cable stop. And that gets you faffing about with extra bits on the headset if you want them on your very nice Whisky fork.

Now, if you want to go all-in and mount Racers directly to your frame? Commission a custom steel fork and do the same up front? Go for it. But if you're matching the tire clearance of the Whisky, I'd personally go with the RG957 or the older Shimano BR-600 if you want silver and can hunt them down. Again, my opinion, but the RG957 are 95-97% as good as any modern sidepull.

[mhespenheide]

Originally Posted by Peter P.

I'd sooner buy a set of old Universal centerpull brakes, or Weinman. Paul's are just plain ugly to me.

Dia-Compe have some beautiful models, or Mafac if you want to re-polish them and score vintage points. Or Paul Racers in polished silver if you want modern -- the "full" Racers are much prettier than the more squarish Racer M's.

[Louis]

Originally Posted by sokyroadie

No way do I want or need a disc road bike

Don't deny it - these days anyone who's thinking about rim brakes always wonders "how wide can I go with the tires?" and from there it's short jump to discs. (shudder)

[hokoman]

Originally Posted by Louis

Don't deny it - these days anyone who's thinking about rim brakes always wonders "how wide can I go with the tires?" and from there it's short jump to discs. (shudder)

Mid reach clears 38 tires comfortably, why would a road bike need anything wider?

[Louis]

I was kidding.

[hokoman]

Originally Posted by Louis

I was kidding.

I missed the winking emoji! Too early in the morning for me here!

[ColonelJLloyd]

Just go with VO.

[benb]

Originally Posted by sokyroadie

I am getting close in the queue for a Ti Medium reach frame - I have a new Whisky Med reach fork and was planning on either TRP RG957 or Velo Orange Medium reach calipers (black). I have the TRP brakes on another Medium reach Seven and they are fine.

"They are fine" is the key point to me.

On a bike like you're buying (super nice custom Ti) the bikes should be ****ing awesome, not fine.

If the Paul's are that good they are probably worth it.

I like disc brakes, but I've been curmudgeonly about it more cause I don't want to have to replace whole bikes to get them, especially if it's replacing a perfectly good bike that didn't necessarily need to be replaced.

I don't view rim brakes at all as a problem for bikes with 30c tires or less with alloy wheels. They are generally pretty great. But it's these mid reach situations or carbon wheels where things start to get weird and you gotta ask if you're riding a zillion dollar bike why are the breaks not ****ing awesome like everything else on the bike. (Also why I didn't get disc 8 years ago when I bought my rim brake Domane, I was expecting the discs to be ****ing awesome like they were on MTB and the ones I test rode were definitely more "fine".

I have had one bike for a long time that has big tires & rim brakes and it's just been a compromise the entire time, it's the big "meh" part of the bike, but at least it's not an expensive bike.

[mhespenheide]

Originally Posted by benb

"They are fine" is the key point to me.

.../snip/...

I have had one bike for a long time that has big tires & rim brakes and it's just been a compromise the entire time, it's the big "meh" part of the bike, but at least it's not an expensive bike.

@benb, can I ask you for more details as to what you're riding?

I'm curious, because I feel like I've had kind of the opposite experience. I've got a bike with Avid Ultimate canti's and 38mm tires and those brakes are powerful enough that I should probably put a brake booster on the front fork; hard braking can cause the fork to shudder. I've got a bike with TRP RG957 and 33mm tires and they're great. Plenty of power and modulation. All on aluminum rims in dry conditions.

I had a Cannondale with hydro disc brakes and 32mm tires and the brakes were certainly nice, but not another level.

I just ... I don't understand why the market and most riders are so excitied about disc brakes. They're fine. If you like them, good on you. (I don't really care about using carbon rims, though. I can totally understand if you want to run carbon rims, you should use disc brakes.)

I'm thinking about commissioning a custom Ti frame with medium-reach rim brakes just like the OP and the simplicity just wins me over. I can swap wheelsets without having to worry about shimming the rotors. They're easy to maintain. I can lock up the wheels, so they're plenty powerful enough.

[benb]

Mostly my experience here has been my All City Space Horse. It either had Tiagra (original), Rival, or 105 brake/shifters on it across it's lifetime.

I have never actually had the Avid Shorty Ultimates on it.

I had some TRP Cantis, and I had a lot of TRP CX9s I ran on it.

None of those were great, the Cantis tended to be OK for a tiny bit of time right after I tuned everything, then could go to hell very quickly. Just very frequent maintenance. The CX9s were better but still pretty annoying.

One difference for me (possibly) is you're in CA. I was riding my bike in wet conditions or winter conditions with road salt, there were several things:

- Wet/sand/mud/salt accelerating break pad wear on the rim brakes
- Wet/sand/mud/salt generally making the brakes work worse
- Fast pad wear means more frequent balancing/adusting on Cantis/Vs to make sure the pads are squeezing equally, mechanical ratio is still OK, nothing rubbing
- Salty winter weather has always killed the pivots on Cantis/V-brakes for me, and this bike was my winter bike. I probably should have bought Pauls or something at some point, IIRC the Pauls you could disassemble the pivots on the Pauls to clean and relubricate them. TRP CX9s would basically freeze up for me from salt intrusion and have to be replaced every 1-2 seasons.

On top of that The CX9s were about $100/wheel, and the Avids you mention are $100/wheel. That's actually really expensive at this point considering it doesn't even include levers/cables/housing. $100/wheel today buys pretty serious disc brake performance that has none of the durability issues.

That all city Space Horse has been the most expensive bike I've ever owned in terms of money spent fixing or replacing brakes. Vastly more expensive than disc brake mountain bikes I've had that were rode in the same conditions, and those mountain bikes always had vastly better braking performance.

The SRAM Rival hydraulic caliper is actually cheaper than the Avid shorty, by quite a bit.

[truth]

Originally Posted by mhespenheide

Now, if you want to go all-in and mount Racers directly to your frame? Commission a custom steel fork and do the same up front? Go for it. But if you're matching the tire clearance of the Whisky, I'd personally go with the RG957 or the older Shimano BR-600 if you want silver and can hunt them down. Again, my opinion, but the RG957 are 95-97% as good as any modern sidepull.

This is it, get a steel fork and direct mount racers! If not, go with the Shimano mid reach brakes.

[mhespenheide]

Originally Posted by benb

Mostly my experience here has been my All City Space Horse. It either had Tiagra (original), Rival, or 105 brake/shifters on it across it's lifetime.

I have never actually had the Avid Shorty Ultimates on it.

I had some TRP Cantis, and I had a lot of TRP CX9s I ran on it.

None of those were great, the Cantis tended to be OK for a tiny bit of time right after I tuned everything, then could go to hell very quickly. Just very frequent maintenance. The CX9s were better but still pretty annoying.

One difference for me (possibly) is you're in CA. I was riding my bike in wet conditions or winter conditions with road salt, there were several things:

- Wet/sand/mud/salt accelerating break pad wear on the rim brakes
- Wet/sand/mud/salt generally making the brakes work worse
- Fast pad wear means more frequent balancing/adusting on Cantis/Vs to make sure the pads are squeezing equally, mechanical ratio is still OK, nothing rubbing
- Salty winter weather has always killed the pivots on Cantis/V-brakes for me, and this bike was my winter bike. I probably should have bought Pauls or something at some point, IIRC the Pauls you could disassemble the pivots on the Pauls to clean and relubricate them. TRP CX9s would basically freeze up for me from salt intrusion and have to be replaced every 1-2 seasons.

On top of that The CX9s were about $100/wheel, and the Avids you mention are $100/wheel. That's actually really expensive at this point considering it doesn't even include levers/cables/housing. $100/wheel today buys pretty serious disc brake performance that has none of the durability issues.

That all city Space Horse has been the most expensive bike I've ever owned in terms of money spent fixing or replacing brakes. Vastly more expensive than disc brake mountain bikes I've had that were rode in the same conditions, and those mountain bikes always had vastly better braking performance.

The SRAM Rival hydraulic caliper is actually cheaper than the Avid shorty, by quite a bit.

Thanks for that. All of that makes a lot of sense. I have ridden through seven winters in rainy Seattle in the past, but those conditions were just wet, not wet+grit or wet+salt. I've been through one winter in north-central MA, but mostly I switched to running or indoor workouts over the winter. So you've got a lot more experience in riding in bad conditions.

(I did pick up my Avid Ultimates for $80 for the pair secondhand, but I'm glad I haven't had to go through all of the maintenance and upkeep you did.)