New road bike - Di2 without disc brakes

jd73 · Postby **jd73** » Sat Feb 21, 2015 9:14 am

I am looking for a new road bike as I am over adjusting gears and want to go to Di2. It seems a lot of the 2015 bikes which have Di2 all come with disc brakes including Specialized, De Rosa, Colnago..... Unless I build up my own, are there any ideas on Di2 bikes without disc brakes ? Or am I missing something and should move to disc brakes also. I didn't think disc brakes were approved for racing my local crits.

Thanks

cyclotaur · Postby **cyclotaur** » Sat Feb 21, 2015 10:44 am

Disc brakes are the 'fries' of road bikes - they make your road bike fat and ugly and are an unnecessary 'up-sell' to the classy road bike aesthetic.

Just my opinion of course.... [emoji6]

Jesmol · Postby **Jesmol** » Sat Feb 21, 2015 11:05 am

Focus cayo 2.0, just got mine

Nikolai · Postby **Nikolai** » Sat Feb 21, 2015 3:42 pm

Plenty of bikes with Di2 and rim brakes: Cervelo R5, S-Works Venge, Supersix Evo Hi-Mod, Propel Advanced SL and more. These are DA models BTW. There are more with Ultegra and Campag electronic gear. Fondriest for example...

Dirty32 · Postby **Dirty32** » Sat Feb 21, 2015 4:03 pm

As mentioned above, you've almost unlimited options for a bike with Electronic shifting and rim brakes.

Not all that many have adopted / released new models with discs as yet... Perhaps those that have offer them as an option, but almost all of the models will still have a rim brake specced bike available too. I dont think any have completely adopted disc only, and are not offering a rim braked model... Perhaps the new Defy is the only one I know of.

What kind of bikes are you most interested in, or have you been looking at?

cyclotaur · Postby **cyclotaur** » Sat Feb 21, 2015 4:58 pm

Dirty32 wrote:As mentioned above, you've almost unlimited options for a bike with Electronic shifting and rim brakes.

Not all that many have adopted / released new models with discs as yet... Perhaps those that have offer them as an option, but almost all of the models will still have a rim brake specced bike available too. I dont think any have completely adopted disc only, and are not offering a rim braked model... Perhaps the new Defy is the only one I know of.

What kind of bikes are you most interested in, or have you been looking at?

I think Giant are testing the limits of the market a bit moving their entire Defy carbon range to disks. That alone would push me to another brand for an endurance carbon road bike.

AndrewCowley · Postby **AndrewCowley** » Sat Feb 21, 2015 7:06 pm

Nikolai wrote:Plenty of bikes with Di2 and rim brakes: Cervelo R5, S-Works Venge, Supersix Evo Hi-Mod, Propel Advanced SL and more. These are DA models BTW. There are more with Ultegra and Campag electronic gear. Fondriest for example...

Most of those are available with both disc and rim brakes, aren't they? So to answer the OP you don't have to get disc brakes. Most of the reviews of these high end bikes do tend to feature the disc model however.

biker jk · Postby **biker jk** » Sat Feb 21, 2015 9:16 pm

cyclotaur wrote:Disc brakes are the 'fries' of road bikes - they make your road bike fat and ugly and are an unnecessary 'up-sell' to the classy road bike aesthetic.

Just my opinion of course.... [emoji6]

You know what they say about opinions...

cyclotaur · Postby **cyclotaur** » Sat Feb 21, 2015 10:27 pm

biker jk wrote:
cyclotaur wrote:Disc brakes are the 'fries' of road bikes - they make your road bike fat and ugly and are an unnecessary 'up-sell' to the classy road bike aesthetic.

Just my opinion of course.... [emoji6]
You know what they say about opinions...

Yep - but cliches ... . I avoid like the plague.

biker jk · Postby **biker jk** » Sat Feb 21, 2015 10:51 pm

cyclotaur wrote:
biker jk wrote:
cyclotaur wrote:Disc brakes are the 'fries' of road bikes - they make your road bike fat and ugly and are an unnecessary 'up-sell' to the classy road bike aesthetic.

Just my opinion of course.... [emoji6]
You know what they say about opinions...
Yep - but cliches ... . I avoid like the plague.

Your comment about disc brakes was riddled with them.

Three in your first sentence. I'll stick with my assessment of your opinion.

cyclotaur · Postby **cyclotaur** » Sat Feb 21, 2015 11:23 pm

biker jk wrote:
cyclotaur wrote:
biker jk wrote:
You know what they say about opinions...
Yep - but cliches ... . I avoid like the plague.
Your comment about disc brakes was riddled with them. Three in your first sentence. I'll stick with my assessment of your opinion.

Haha - your irony detector is broken. [emoji16] and you haven't actually assessed my opinion, or offered your own, just quoted a well known truism about opinions in general.

Anyhoo ... I can see why OP might want to move to Di2 to simplify/improve shifting, especially if they didn't want the fuss of continually adjusting cables and ders, as per the OP's comment.

Having done that, though, throwing disc brakes into the mix complicates it back up again. In my opinion, of course. So I agree with the OP to an extent - Di2 could be an improvement, disc brakes are a complication.

But I like to keep things simple - YMMV.

Typhoon Ken · Postby **Typhoon Ken** » Sun Feb 22, 2015 8:08 pm

Merida have several bikes in their range (2014 & 2015) that have Ultegra Di2 and no discs. You can also still get good deals on 2014 Defys that had no discs as well.

skull · Postby **skull** » Sun Feb 22, 2015 8:12 pm

jd73 wrote:It seems a lot of the 2015 bikes which have Di2 all come with disc brakes

What you talking about willis?

human909 · Postby **human909** » Sun Feb 22, 2015 10:17 pm

I am still struggling to under stand the benefits of disc brakes for your average road bike. Hydraulic rim brakes make more sense than disc brakes. After all an aluminium rim is essential a 622mm disc.

Drizt · Postby **Drizt** » Sun Feb 22, 2015 10:19 pm

human909 wrote:I am still struggling to under stand the benefits of disc brakes for your average road bike. Hydraulic rim brakes make more sense than disc brakes. After all an aluminium rim is essential a 622mm disc.

Go ride one and find out for yourself

It works and it works better than any rim brake.

queequeg · Postby **queequeg** » Mon Feb 23, 2015 8:29 am

human909 wrote:I am still struggling to under stand the benefits of disc brakes for your average road bike. Hydraulic rim brakes make more sense than disc brakes. After all an aluminium rim is essential a 622mm disc.

As someone who commutes in all weather, I'll take the disc brakes over any rim brake. In theory the rim is just a big disc brake, but the pads and rim material are completely different, and a rim in the wet get covered in all sorts of grit and grime which then gets ground into the rims.
I had some days, back in my pre-disc days, where I went through one set of pads in a single day. The stopping power was atrocious, and that was with Koolstops!

cyclotaur · Postby **cyclotaur** » Mon Feb 23, 2015 9:00 am

Don't forget the OP wants a road bike for crit racing. No mention of gravel, commuting, touring or any scenario in which the superior stopping power of discs might justify them (on a different style of bike), much less on a Di2 equipped road bike.

human909 · Postby **human909** » Mon Feb 23, 2015 10:37 am

Yep like cyclotaur said. The OP doesn't seem to have the need for disc brakes.

queequeg wrote:As someone who commutes in all weather, I'll take the disc brakes over any rim brake. In theory the rim is just a big disc brake, but the pads and rim material are completely different, and a rim in the wet get covered in all sorts of grit and grime which then gets ground into the rims.
I had some days, back in my pre-disc days, where I went through one set of pads in a single day. The stopping power was atrocious, and that was with Koolstops!

I also commute in all weather. I also mountain bike. For the commuting I'm happy without discs, for mountain biking I'm not.

I go through a set of pads every couple of years on my rims, I can't comprehend going through pads in a day!

queequeg · Postby **queequeg** » Mon Feb 23, 2015 10:49 am

human909 wrote:Yep like cyclotaur said. The OP doesn't seem to have the need for disc brakes.

queequeg wrote:As someone who commutes in all weather, I'll take the disc brakes over any rim brake. In theory the rim is just a big disc brake, but the pads and rim material are completely different, and a rim in the wet get covered in all sorts of grit and grime which then gets ground into the rims.
I had some days, back in my pre-disc days, where I went through one set of pads in a single day. The stopping power was atrocious, and that was with Koolstops!
I also commute in all weather. I also mountain bike. For the commuting I'm happy without discs, for mountain biking I'm not.

I go through a set of pads every couple of years on my rims, I can't comprehend going through pads in a day!

On my road bike my pads last ages. I am on my 2nd set in 6 years, but I have only covered 8,500km in that time. I have done over 50,000km of commuting in the same time and have been through a lot of rim pads (both rim & disc). The cheap pads that came with the hybrid bike were awful. First wet day and they dissolved like chalk. Best pads were Koolstop dual compound, but still not great at stopping in the wet, and wheel rims getting stripper away by the grit.

I am still 50/50 on my next road bike having discs or not. I was tempted by Di2, but I think that is a solution looking for a problem. Hydro rim brakes on 11-speed mechanical sounds nice though, as long as I can stop in the wet!

human909 · Postby **human909** » Mon Feb 23, 2015 11:03 am

Regardless of a rims or disc debate, that is an impressive number of commuting ks!

The hillyness of your riding obviously makes a big diffence. I don't generally ride in hilly areas so that naturally results in minimal pad wear. The other day I rode my road bike through some mud after some path flooding. I was back on the road and several ks away until I realised that my rims were still covered in muddy slush! Clearly I didn't need to brake at all for the last few ks, despite traffic lights and other traffic.

Nobody · Postby **Nobody** » Mon Feb 23, 2015 11:43 am

human909 wrote:I am still struggling to under stand the benefits of disc brakes for your average road bike. Hydraulic rim brakes make more sense than disc brakes. After all an aluminium rim is essential a 622mm disc.

I understand your point of view for dry weather use. If you always brake from the drops and ride in the dry, then yes, no point. I prefer to brake from the hoods and found back in 2010 that most road caliper brakes weren't too good used in this way. That's why I went to a 185mm BB7 disc on the front and I'm still happy with it. I believe the current direct mount mechanical road calipers are better than previous designs of calipers, but the bikes they come with are usually expensive. That will hopefully change in future years.

My wet/utility bike has Avid Ultimate V brakes (the ones that the noodle can be mounted either way) with compression-less cables and Lifeline Professional pads and TBH it's better than the BB7. Smoother and more powerful in the dry. It still surprises me sometimes just how powerful it is. Because the rim brake bike has 2" tires, it doesn't appear to suffer much from wet weather problems like thinner road bike tyres do IMO.

Hydraulic rim brakes are an obvious improvement over mechanical, but I can also understand why people are more likely to opt for disc if riding thin tyres in wet weather, which is hard to avoid sometimes.

doggatas · Postby **doggatas** » Tue Feb 24, 2015 7:45 pm

A mate was looking at getting the top level S-Works Tarmac with Dura Ace Di2. This particular bike cannot be purchased stock with rim brakes. The bike shop is building him up the s-works tarmac with Di2 and rim brakes for about the same price.

So the OP's post has its merits if you happen to be looking for a stock sworks tarmac with dura ace di2 and rim brakes.