TNC said:
Your love of rim brakes and cable pull discs is your business, but be realistic when you seem to suggest that they are all that is needed for ideal effectiveness for all ebike applications.
I've been riding bikes as a primary means of transportation since 1987. I worked as a shop cycle mechanic first in 1992, and continuously since 2009. Some of that time I was a 300+ miles per week rider, some of that time I lived in a city where I rode on streets with 20+ percent grades, and some of that time I commuted daily on my bike at a body weight over 400 pounds. My body weight has exceeded 300 pounds for over 20 years now.
My point is, I've demanded much more of bicycle brakes than most people are physically capable of demanding, for more miles than most people will ever ride in their whole lives. There was a period when I bent an average of one MTB fork per month, by braking. With rim brakes. On the street. Someone who isn't heavy enough to do that unless he crashes into something can't assess for himself how strong a brake really is. He only knows what its lever feel is like.
I suspect that's where you're at, like most people who declare hydro discs to be categorically stronger that other brakes, without being able to push
any brakes to their physical limits. You're assessing a brake's power by its lever response. But that's not power, it's just lever response.
I like to point out that any brake which can tip up your bike up on its front wheel is as strong as it is possible to use on that bike. But when I do that, I'm holding down the bike with over 350 pounds of my own weight, so it's a different thing than when you do it. When I ride my cargo e-bike down a hill, I have to dissipate the potential energy stored in almost 500 pounds of bike and rider (plus whatever I'm carrying) as I drop in elevation. So the heat generated will be more than that of a smaller rider on a smaller bike, even if he thinks he's super fast and his bike is so badass.
That is why I like to refer to e-pedicabs as one benchmark of brake performance. There's no other place in the world besides a two bench pedicab where bicycle brakes are ever asked to slow or stop 700 pounds of rolling mass per brake. And those big trikes don't use bicycle hydro discs because such brakes don't cut it. There are some hydro discs on pedicabs as I pointed out before, but they're motorcycle levers connected to racing go-kart calipers and thick proprietary rotors (and they still have problems).
So you can go on telling yourself that a brake's lever feel and initial response is the main indication of how much its maximum or continuous braking power is, but please don't tell other people that. You don't know, and you can't know, what the maximum power of most kinds of brakes is-- because your bike will kick you off before you get to that point.
