When is an amazing view not an amazing view? When it is blighted by a rubbing disc brake, that’s when. I spent three days last week riding around the coast of Kent in southern England, on the Cantii Way cycle route, it is, under most circumstances, rather lovely.
My experience of it would have been better, I’d imagine, if my rear brake hadn’t started dragging heavily somewhere around the middle of the second day, without anything I could do about it. On our return the bike was banished to the naughty corner of the garage and is currently awaiting sale for scrap aluminium – unless my mood improves.
I’d heartily recommend the Cantii Way. It’s not too challenging, it’s an adventure and it’s beautiful in places. Something else I’d heartily recommend is making sure your hydraulic disc brakes are not going to throw a wobbly halfway round. They need to not be just ‘OK’, or ‘fine’, but absolutely perfect. Either that or make sure you’re carrying all the tools, all the spares, and a whole pannierful of patience.
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At least 30 minutes of my adventure was spent with the bike upside down on a small patch of grass in central Hythe. Thirty minutes that were, it transpired, entirely wasted. Sadly, the lack of pliers, Q-tips and isopropyl alcohol in my panniers found me out. Given I’d spent 90 minutes the day before I left, cleaning sticky pistons and checking pad wear, I assumed I’d be OK. I was at first, but it didn’t last.
Ultimately, the piston was stuck again, and would not be budged. I ended up riding the second half of the Cantii Way with a rear wheel that came to a stop in less than three rotations, even when spun heartily by hand. I tried not to think about it.
If you’re still running rim brakes, feel free to ignore all this blathering. Unless you’re very unlucky, your worst case braking-related scenario is that you run the pads too low. And that is pretty unlikely to happen, given how easy it is to check on wear even as you’re riding. You can laugh at the hapless Hythe village disc brake idiot, safe in the knowledge you won’t be found with the bike upside-down, swearing at the sky, messing about with miniscule hex keys and fiddly clips, expecting at any moment to feel a jet of warm DOT 5.1 decorate your face.
I should have known. After all, less than a week before I’d found myself with a bike upside-down – different bike this time, if you can believe that – in the grassy entrance to a Hampshire field, slowly covering myself with road filth as I inspected the remains of a rear disc brake pad assembly. Having taken out the rear wheel and employed a Torx key so small it could probably have doubled up for acupuncture purposes on my creaking back, I was finally able to make an unrepeatable but nevertheless accurate assessment of the situation.
One bit of metal had sheared off, missing in action; another was twisted beyond redemption, and the pads themselves appeared to have all the stopping power of a carpet slipper. At least I wasn’t at the farthest point of a four-hour ride. Oh, hang on – Yes I was.
All this despite the fact that, would you believe, I’d checked pad wear before I left. That itself involved Houdini-like contortions as I craned to get the closest look that my ageing, long-sighted eyes would allow.
The pads had worn low enough, it transpired, that the retaining clip had caught on the disc and snapped. It was a long ride home with just a front brake.
Admittedly, if I’d been a bit more proactive on the pad replacement front, this particular incident could have been avoided. But at £10-£20 a wheel, these aren’t the sort of items you want to discard prematurely.
There is no doubt that discs brakes are powerful, and offer remarkably good all-weather braking. Some would even have you believe they’re largely maintenance free. They kind of are, but that doesn’t mean you can just forget about them and hope everything will be OK. Two bikes in two rides have served as a salient reminder that, eventually that approach will bite you in the butt. And it will hurt.
All that said, I’ve just been reminded that Tadej Pogačar won Milan-San Remo this year with a rubbing disc brake – a race that was longer than my entire three-day trip on the Cantii Way.
I’ll get me coat.
