On 4/28/2018 5:47 PM, jbeattie wrote:
On Saturday, April 28, 2018 at 7:17:42 AM UTC-7, Joerg wrote:
On 2018-04-27 18:35, jbeattie wrote:

A catastrophic failure can happen in any system. Breaking a new
cable is a catastrophic failure. It shouldn't happen (it's never
happened to me in maybe 300K miles of riding).

I had it happen half a dozen times. My sister had it happen at least
twice. Two of those incidences caused accidents, a 3rd almost did
(blowing through a non 4-way downhill stop sign but nobody came). These
were all good quality cables bought at reputable bike shops, not
department store merchandise.

Something is horribly wrong. I've never snapped a new brake cable or even broken an old one. Shift cable, yes -- STI levers with the hard bends can be rough on those little cables.

I do remember breaking a front brake cable once. That's in 40+ years of
avid adult cycling. Now I replace them every five years or so.


What wears really fast are organic pads. The kind bike shops sell you
for north of $15/pair. I like ceramic-based pads. You can't use cheap
rotors with those though, they'd eat them up. I use Shimano RT66 rotors.
They cost me $22 each, 8-inchers.

Organic are terrible, but even the metalic pads don't last that long -- not nearly as long as rim brake pads.

Again, I think it's wise to carry one spare set of pads on every disc
brake bike. This advice came from a very experienced bike tourist who
stayed with us, and who had lost all his brakes suddenly on one hilly
tour because of pad wear.

SO TECH QUESTION: what would cause periodic dragging -- and a pinging-type drag, almost like the return springs are hitting the rotor. Then it goes away, and braking is normal -- so I know the pads are not worn out and the springs are not hitting the rotor (but I will check). Piston drag? The bike is not that old, but I could bleed it. The calipers are properly centered.
Hey, I think we just discovered another benefit of disc brakes! We've
been short on really tricky bike tech problems to solve, but discs can
provide lots of new ones for us! They might even save this discussion group!


--
- Frank Krygowski