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TECH NEWS
specialized tarmac disc (2)UCI-approved road bike disc brakes coming in 2016, says WFSGI's bike man
Disc brakes will appear in the professional road peloton in 2016, according to Jeroen Snijders Blok of the World Federation Sporting Goods Industry (WFSGI).
Snijders Blok is also chief operating officer of Accell Group, owner of bike brands including Lapierre, Raleigh, Ghost, Koga Myata and Van Nicholas. He is the bike industry representative on the board of directors of WFSGI, which has been meeting with the UCI Equipment Commission to discuss the technical regulation of race bikes and the sometimes fractious relationship between the industry and the UCI.
Reacting to a claim on Benelux trade website www.tweewieler.nl that discs would be approved for 2015, Snijders Blok told that site's pan-European sister site Bike Europe: “The report on Tweewieler.nl surprised me. It is true that we are getting positive responses in our meetings with the UCI. But despite that it will take longer than 2015 for the UCI to approve the usage of disc brakes in professional road racing.
“That it will take longer is caused by an extensive examination the UCI wants on the consequences the usage of disc brakes will have.
“They want to know more on what for instance happens at 80km/h descents; what's the heat then at carbon rims? Could this cause severe skin burns in the event of a fall? The UCI wants to have such matters clarified before any approval.”
"So, first this examination must be completed and the results discussed. All this means that it will take up to 2016 before professionals will use disc brakes. I do not expect that all this will take up to 2017. The usage of UCI approved disc brakes at WorldTour races will happen in 2016. At least, that's what I expect now."
You might think you’d have bigger things to worry about than rotor burn if you deck it at 50mph. It seems likely that as well as safety concerns, the UCI is also worried about more mundane factors such as wheel interchangeability.
Widespread adoption of disc brakes could substantially increase the complexity of providing neutral technical support in big races. At the moment neutral support in, say, the Tour de France just has to deal with the difference between Shimano and Campagnolo sprocket clusters.
Add in all the combinations and permutations of 130mm and 135mm rear axles; through-axless conventional quick releases; and 140mm and 160mm rotors, and Mavic will have to replace its cars with big yellow lorries to carry enough spares.
At the moment, only Shimano actually has a working road bike disc brake on the market. Depending on how you look at it, it’s either a bit premature for the UCI to be thinking about allowing a technology that’s not yet available to all teams, or refreshingly foresightful to be trying to anticipate the issues.
Of the other two big component makers, SRAM’s recalled disc brakes were supposed to reappear in April, but are still in redesign hell and Campagnolo says its discs won’t be available until 2016. It could be that the UCI is deliberately giving all players plenty of time to get ready.
That goes for bike makers too. You’d expect companies the size of Trek and Specialized to be designing competition-level bikes with an eye on possible UCI rule developments, but Trek has recently plumped for bolt-through axles with the disc version of the Domane 6.9, while the recently-unveiled Specialized Tarmac uses conventional quick-release skewers.
It seems what we have here is another example of the adage that the bike industry adores standards, that's why it has so many of them. From the point of view of everyday riders, the UCI might impose some welcome order on the current free-for-all.
John has been writing about bikes and cycling for over 30 years since discovering that people were mug enough to pay him for it rather than expecting him to do an honest day's work.
He was heavily involved in the mountain bike boom of the late 1980s as a racer, team manager and race promoter, and that led to writing for Mountain Biking UK magazine shortly after its inception. He got the gig by phoning up the editor and telling him the magazine was rubbish and he could do better. Rather than telling him to get lost, MBUK editor Tym Manley called John’s bluff and the rest is history.
Since then he has worked on MTB Pro magazine and was editor of Maximum Mountain Bike and Australian Mountain Bike magazines, before switching to the web in 2000 to work for CyclingNews.com. Along with road.cc founder Tony Farrelly, John was on the launch team for BikeRadar.com and subsequently became editor in chief of Future Publishing’s group of cycling magazines and websites, including Cycling Plus, MBUK, What Mountain Bike and Procycling.
John has also written for Cyclist magazine, edited the BikeMagic website and was founding editor of TotalWomensCycling.com before handing over to someone far more representative of the site's main audience.
He joined road.cc in 2013. He lives in Cambridge where the lack of hills is more than made up for by the headwinds.
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65 comments
However with disc rims you don't have to worry about the rim heating up to more than ~50ºc so can use different/less epoxy.
As you said "tubulars are lighter because they do not have to withstand the force of the clincher tyre pressing outwards against the inside of the rim."
Without brakes compressing the rim you only have to deal the tube(less tyre) pushing out, dealing with force in one less direction = less material for layup = lighter surely?
Maybe true regarding the rim brake squeezing the rim but the problem of the rim heating up is the choice of resin.
NASA use resin infused carbon fibre as heat shields for re-entry to the atmosphere. Just google PICA and phenolic resins. If you can make a heat shield for re-entry out of carbon fibre then I'm sure it can be made to withstand a few hundred degrees of heat generated through braking.
Terrible advice!
As for PFs the fixie crowd will be twizzling their moustaches with glee when they find out about Bakelite rims, you are right of course it can be done but the problem is how much it costs to do so.
Ok, maybe PICA heat shield.
Yeah its the resin used in Bakelite - not even high tech. The point is there is more than one solution to the problem.
The advantages I can see regarding disc brakes are no rim wear and no change in performance in wet weather. If you're a bike manufacturer its the great roll-over.
I guess it makes some sense if they're going to abolish minimum frame weights in favour of something like having recognised safety requirement standards that equipment has to pass, the lowering of the minimum weight would offset pretty much any increase caused by disc brakes (at least for riders on smaller frames who have weight added already)
I too hope they do something sensible like stipulate standards re rear spacing, rotor size etc pretty quickly so manufacturers don't end up switching from one that they adopt early on to a new required standard (although I'm sure bike makers would love giving people another reason to buy a new bike)
If there's a target date to work towards then it will hopefully push development quite quickly and more refined designs will appear sooner rather than later
How much weight can you drop from a 200g deep carbon rim by not having to worry about a brake track anyway?
Sod all i'd imagine. Of course finding a deep carbon rim weighing 200g is another matter.....
Almost none.
Tubulars and clinchers both have a braking surface but tubulars are lighter because they do not have to withstand the force of the clincher tyre pressing outwards against the inside of the rim. That is where the weight comes from. Besides the miniscule weight advantage of having no braking surface is lost due to the necessity for double crossed spokes and therefore more of them along with nipples.
I'm another who won't be buying another rim braked frame, I've been toying with upgrading but will just wait now. Interested to see how triathlon and tt bikes will handle them, are disc brakes more or less aerodynamic ?
They're slightly less aero but as you don't need to have a braking surface the rim needs less compromises, it can also be lighter which offsets the disc weight.
- http://road.cc/content/feature/83327-disc-brakes-v-rim-brakes-which-are-...
It depends a bit on what you expect.
In the Culprit test, the area differences between the disc and rim brake setups are about the same across the yaw angles as you would find between the same bike with Zipp 404s compared with 32 spoke box rimmed wheels.
If you want to do a like for like comparison, I'd suggest that in terms of overall aero drag and overall weight, a disc braked bike with 404s and a rim braked bike with an unaero 32 spoked alloy wheel would be about the same.
Then you have to weigh up the improved braking of discs vs alloy rim, along with the improved aero you could get from a lower spoke count 30mm deep aero shaped alloy rim.
It'll be interesting to see how much extra freedom is available in rim design weight and shape when no brake track is needed. It'd seem unlikely you could get lighter than with a tubular rim, but we'll see.
I love hydraulic disc brakes either on my Kona mtb or my Boardman CXR9.4DI2 with shimano setup. The confidence I have with the brakes in any condition is very reassuring. When riding in groups when it is raining, I see other riders with rim brakes braking very early to ensure their brakes work, at this point I just feather brake to maintain my distance. They can easily over power the grip of the tyres, which is the way brakes should operate(the rider then modulates the braking affect to slow down). Much better than worrying how the hell do I slow down when rim brakes don't initially bite.
Re changing wheels, taking the wheel off and putting it back on seems no worse than rim. Nothing technically difficult for the likes of Shimano, it's not like disc brakes have just been invented. Normally hydraulic brakes the pads self centre after one operation and the pads pull back when the lever is released, giving clearance.
If I'm coming off at 80km/h, the last thing I'm going to be worried about is a disc brake burn.....
Bike manufacturers LOVE standards! In fact, they love them so much that each has their own one.
Thinking that this could be the end of rim braked purchases for me also..
I'm possibly alone on this, but I've bought my last rim braked bike.
Just waiting for choice now.
Man with several companies selling bikes says don't be afraid to buy new bikes.
Hopefully not too many people end up with the wrong standard frames if the UCI make things like 135mm and thru axles compulsory. When they do introduce discs, it'll be interesting to see if they outlaw rim brakes - if discs are as impressively powerful as claimed, I'd rather not have a carbon rim brakes bike behind me when I drop the anchors.
2016 come on, I thought things were changing at the UCI, this is nonsense, they should make them available now, why wait 2 years.
Worried about safety, get rid of carbon wheels, I don't ever recall an alu wheel breaking into bits going over speed bumps.
I don't recall a carbon rim ever breaking to bits over a speed bump either.
Maybe it is because only Shimano have disc brakes that you can buy...
That was mentioned in the article too... are TRP and Avid owned by Shimano then ? There's probably more manufacturers, those are just the ones that spring to mind..
Avid are Sram owned.
TRP are owned by Tektro I think.
Cheers
Maybe I should be clearer, yes you can buy Hope, Avid, TRP, clarkes, you have the formulas that colnago use, etc etc. But the only brake that currently works as it should and that is for sale to the general public, is Shimano. Other systems are cable to hydro with a remote reservoir, or cable to the end, (IMO a pointless compromise).
Until all the groupset manufacturers have a system that their sponsored riders can use, discs won't happen on protour bikes.
I'd say they all work 'as they should' but, yeah, the only major supplier with a fully hydraulic road system shipping now I know is Shimano. That might have been easier to say.
It'll happen when the UCI allow it, which may indeed be when the major groupset suppliers all them.
There's a lot more to it than someone just putting a signature on a piece of paper.
The neutral service thing seems like a red herring to me too, Uci specify the axle and rotor size and there you go, bearing in mind everything else they specify on a race bike it's not that big a step. Whilst there is a mix of rim and discs, neutral service run rims with brake tracks on hubs with discs fitted.
The neutral service thing seems like a red herring to me too, Uci specify the axle and rotor size and there you go, bearing in mind everything else they specify on a race bike it's not that big a step. Whilst there is a mix of rim and discs, neutral service run rims with brake tracks on hubs with discs fitted.
The neutral service thing seems like a red herring to me too, Uci specify the axle and rotor size and there you go, bearing in mind everything else they specify on a race bike it's not that big a step. Whilst there is a mix of rim and discs, neutral service run rims with brake tracks on hubs with discs fitted.
I think they just introduced Pistachio Magnum as a special anniversary edition.
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