Disc brakes or not for family trails?

[chris-s]

Normally I'm a roadie, but in an attempt to get the rest of the family onto bikes, we hired some mountain bikes and did a trail over the christmas period. Despite their aches and sore bits, they all enjoyed it so we're going to look for a bike for the wife first. I would like to get something like a Trek or Specialised in the sub-£300 price bracket, but is it worth spending the extra money to get disc brakes? I can't see her hammering down the mountain side regularly, but I expect the trails to be rough, bumpy, muddy and wet tho with no serious gradiants over any distance.

Cheers!

Chris

 

[skudupnorth]

Normally I'm a roadie, but in an attempt to get the rest of the family onto bikes, we hired some mountain bikes and did a trail over the christmas period. Despite their aches and sore bits, they all enjoyed it so we're going to look for a bike for the wife first. I would like to get something like a Trek or Specialised in the sub-£300 price bracket, but is it worth spending the extra money to get disc brakes? I can't see her hammering down the mountain side regularly, but I expect the trails to be rough, bumpy, muddy and wet tho with no serious gradiants over any distance.

Cheers!

Chris

First of all nice part of the world you live ! I would not think you need discs for trails even if they get boggy and wet.I do parts of the Trans Pennine up here on my Hybrid with good old V brakes and it's proberly very similar to the trails over your way like the Camel trail ect which have good paths for either MTB or road bikes.
Hope to be down in May to play along the Camel with the kids which i cannot wait for !
Steve

 

[Kestevan]

My MTB has disks, the missus MTB has V-Brakes.

She's not into massive off-road shenanigans, and pretty much sticks to trails etc. The only time the V-brakes have been an issue is when we took a shortcut through a very boggy field. The deep mud collected behind the brake caliper and gummed everything up. I was OK with disks, but she was pushing.

This has happened only once.... rest of the time the V-brakes have been fine. They're also cheaper/easier to maintain and stop her bike perfectly well.

If you're not planning on throwing yourself off a wet Alp every weekend V-brakes should be fine.

 

[Globalti]

Agreed. Discs have a small weight penalty, a bigger cost penalty and are no better than a rim brake in dry conditions. If she won't be riding in wet gritty conditions rim brakes are fine.

 

[marzjennings]

One of the main reasons I switched to disc brakes was for mud clearance. I can ride through muddy sections without fear that mud will pack up against rim brakes or degrade braking performance. But I'm talking really muddy like across a ploughed field and so unless the trails you plan to ride are in really poor condition v-brakes should be fine. It may be worth checking that the bikes you do buy could be upgraded to disc brakes later on.

There's a nice bridleway between Mingoose and Chapel Porth which is even nicer if you can get someone else to pick you up at the beach.

 

[henshaw11]

V's should be fine, even in mud they're ok but need longer to bite (and admittedly won't work as well as disks when they do) - as mentioned, in the dry they can match up to disks, or close enough. Unless you're fitting something like XTR V's, the biggest improvement in braking might be with better pads - tho' the same may well apply with OEM disks if you did decide to stretch to them. And if you did, it'd be worth checking out the reviews on mtbr.com to get a flavour of how they compare, they'll be the budget end of things and I suspect there may be a bit more variability between 'em.

First bike I bought with disks wasn't 'til '04 - in fact it was s/h from a mate who'd bought it for a trip to Morzine that a bunch of us did the previous summer. Three of us with V-brakes, no problems with at all, whereas most of the rest of the group with hydraulics were having trouble with arm pump/brakes overheating etc. Admittedly frequently steep cross-country stuff rather than proper downhill runs - there's lots of great climbing/descending outside of the alps trail centres - but illustrates they're more than up to the job. In fact the couple doing the guiding for us ran V's too, on the basis they could fix 'em on-trail..

Might be worth adding - hydraulics *tend* to be fit/forget, but if they need bleeding they're a bit of a faff unless you throw it to the LBS, and if the seals go on the trail, yer stuffed - eg if your front caliper went (which is where most of the braking should be coming from) you can't even swap it with the rear. A good alternative is Avid BB7's - probably the best of the cable operated disks, and a spare cable takes almost no room in your seat pack - tho' like XTR V's they're not a cheap option.

One thing that might be worth adding is that a bike with V's might not have disk-compatible hubs, in the event of ever wanting to put disks on later.

 

[I like Skol]

I wouldn't bother with discs at all in that price bracket or even a little higher. For the use you describe V-brakes will be fine and the kind of gloopy conditions that gum up the brakes are so extreme that your wife will refuse to ride on/in it!

I have V-brakes on my top end MTB (1994 GT Zaskar) and they are great with little attention needed. I have recently bought a GT Hybrid with hydraulic discs and I am surprised at the amount of noise they create and the amount of attention they have required to try and control it, definitely not the fit-an-forget panacea I was expecting.

Use the money you save by not speccing discs to improve the bike spec in other areas.

 

[chris-s]

Excellent, thanks for the really useful replies, just what I was hoping to get.

Chris

 

[GrumpyGregry]

Not

 

[Zoiders]

At the lower end of the price scale if they fit discs they cut corners elsewhere on the bike to meet a budgeted price point.

Stick with rim brakes and make sure it has a usable wheelset and groupset.