[road]

What do we reckon the chances are that manufacturers like Shimano will start making rim brake groupsets across the range again? I’m not sure who started it, the frame or groupset manufacturers, but the move to disc brakes by default is bad. There’s no reason why they can’t start to move back again when they see people still wanting the simplicity and reliability of rim brakes. Same for narrow tyres. I ride with 23 mm tyres all year round because they’re simply faster. Shame to see the death of the proper road bike as every bike slowly turns into a gravel bike. We even saw this when gravel bike races started being won on ‘road’ bikes… Give the consumer more choice! Now that this has been featured on Twitter I would like to add that disc brakes are a psy op.

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[kil0ran]

Most things in cycling go in
Most things in cycling go in cycles. I’ve got a poster of bikes from over 100 years ago – custom frame bags, dropped stays, passive suspension all feature. There’s certainly something to be said for simplicity and not following what the pros use – it’s easy and cheap to build a 7kg rim brake bike, that’s not the case for discs. What it means is that the price of an entry level bike is higher, components might be a group level lower, etc. I mostly ride discs these days, particularly in winter but my cheap rim brake bike also puts a smile on my face.

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