[oldbbsnickname]

Biking for 40+ years from around the neighborhood to centuries, and do maintenance except cost-prohibitive procedures.

I have road and mountain bikes with rim brakes (grew up with them), disc brakes, and a 4kW scooter with disc brakes and regenerative braking.

Disc brakes are high maintenance: oil (leaks and water content), pads, and springs.

Rim brakes are more-or-less maintenance-free except cleaning the rims maybe every year or 2, and pads every 5-10 years. Only rarely alignment.

The mechanical advantage and safety is theoretically better with rim brakes because the forces are much higher in disc brakes due to the differences in lever distance.

[nikau]

> Disc brakes are high maintenance: oil (leaks and water content), pads, and springs.

Wow your rim brakes don't use pads?

I've found disc brakes to be so much less hassle than rim brakes - you just remove the retaining pin, spread the pads, take out old pads, drop in new pads, re-insert retaining pin, pump the lever a few times, done.

All in all its a few minute job and less time consuming than swapping rim pads and adjusting toe in. Riding in wet conditions with sintered disc pads results in less frequent pad change than with rim brakes.

And its certainly much less time consuming than re-lacing a wheel like I used to do once the rim was worn through from rim brakes.

[JohnFen]

> Rim brakes are more-or-less maintenance-free except cleaning the rims maybe every year or 2, and pads every 5-10 years. Only rarely alignment.

Damn, I wish I had that maintenance pattern with them. For me, cleaning the rims and shoes was a daily requirement during the rainy/muddy season, a set of pads would last me about a year, and the alignment needed adjustment every few months.

With disc brakes, I've needed none of that aside from alignment. I have needed to adjust the alignment every so often, but that's not that big of a deal.

[scheme271]

Leaks aren't too common and water content isn't a problem unless you're doing extended braking (e.g. going down a long and steep mountain ). The water content only really matters if you heat the brake fluid up enough to boil the water in it.