The conversation was started by a pro cyclist about the incredible advantages of disc brakes. He wrote a great paean to disc brakes, which are absolutely far superior to rim brakes, but he ended it with a call for all cyclists to immediately switch.
Now I'm all about embracing new hotness, but I also have pay a mortgage and make sure my kids can eat. Those things are priorities, and cycling is a hobby. An obsessive hobby, but still: a hobby.
I responded to his argument by saying the conversion to disc brakes is not a trivial matter. One cannot, for instance, simply mount disc calipers to any given road frame, nor can one slap on a disc to any given wheel. Both items are made specifically for one brake technology or the other (let's not get into weird custom-builds). So to "make the switch" to disc means buying a new bike. Or new bikes.
Instead of acknowledging that there is a price barrier to changing brakes, he pointed out that I have more bikes than he does, as if to invalidate my argument of price savings.
I was lucky that, when I first got into this hobby in 2015, 11-speed components were just becoming standard equipment across road and mountain bikes. I chose to set my bikes up with Shimano and SRAM components because they're largely interchangeable. So gearing was easy. I could swap drivetrains between bikes with no more effort than a couple of hours and a new set of cables.
But when I bought my 2nd road bike for commuting, I had a tough choice to make: disc or rim brakes? I knew I wanted faster wheels for my race bike, and that the stock wheels on the commuter would be horrible. If I went with disc brakes, I'd be buying a new bike plus two new sets of wheels. That would mean shelling out at least $1,000 for a new bike, then another $550 for Mavic's Ksyrium Pro Disc (cheap, light, and shipped with tires!), AND THEN another ~$1000 for used carbon race wheels for the other bike. Minimum $2500. Or I could buy the rim-brake bike and upgrade my race wheels later, saving hundreds (ended up saving $800 going this route).
Now there are many riders out there for whom those numbers sound pretty cheap, and nothing throws that into sharper relief than the industry buzz around the new Specialized Tarmac SL7. This new "end all, be all" of road cycling can be yours for the low low price of $12,000, plus tax. Oh and then you'll have to buy pedals, because bikes don't come with pedals. Oh you want bottle cages? Maybe a cyclocomputer? You're bumping up into the $13,500 range now, all in. The kids don't really eat all that much, anyway.
Over the past 5 years, I've accumulated 3 road bikes of my own (+1 for Alastair) that all use rim brakes. Across the board I have a TT bike, a race bike, and a rain/commuter bike. On those bikes I have aero wheels, a disc TT rear wheel, climbing wheels, and a set of commuting wheels. Literally all completely interchangeable with just a few adjustments. And they can also all trickle down to Alastair's bike. All in, including pedals, cyclocomputer, bottle cages, panniers for the commuter, etc etc etc? $12,323.45. I have the receipts.
For less than the take-home cost of a top-range SL7, I've gotten 29,526.8 miles over 1255 rides across 3 rim-brake bikes.
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| All costs are tracked in Excel and correlated to Strava data thru Power BI |
No single bike in my arsenal has even crossed the midway point of the SL7's cost, including my main race bike, which is just now--after 5 years--nudging up to $6000, including $2200 in repairs and $2285 in upgrades. FWIW, that bike brand new in 2011 was listed at $7000 (the same price as a brand new mid-range Tarmac SL7...still without pedals!), so I 'm not even up to the initial purchase price in 20,066 miles of use. I bought it for $950 in August 2015 and have replaced literally everything on it except the fork and the crankset. It has thrashed bearings, crashed hard sacrificed pedals & handlebars, and it's still a rock solid light-weight (998g) carbon, aero, internally-routed crit monster, even at 10 years old.
This sport is stupendously expensive--there's just no getting around that. But it doesn't have to be expensive-r just because there's a new braking technology around. In fact the budget racer is LOVING life right now while all the rich kids dump their old tech. I got my Zipp 404 Firecrests last year at a race for a third of what they cost new. Same for my Super9. These deals do not yet exist in the disc-brake space.
But I know the tech is changing. 12-speed is in the market. Electronic shifting is becoming such a standard some bikes don't even support cables any more. Disc brakes are the norm. When I replace a bike, it will have at least one of those 3 items, and my interchangeability will be diminished. And that's ok, but it's not going to happen until I break a bike, because my kids eat like horses.
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