Building a wet weather bike for the road

[xxamr_corpxx]

I'm planning to build a wet weather bike for winter training. It's going to be an aluminium MTB frame with road slicks and upright handlebars. Have some questions however :

• Lights - Is a 4.8V one I got for $7 going to be enough?
• Brakes - V brakes vs disc brakes? How do they do in the wet

Thanks guys.

 

[aa9t8]

my winter bike is a 2001 norco bush pilot. 6061 aluminium, high pressure skinny tires, fenders with a piece i enginered to protect the front derailer, for lites they are just lites with rechargable batteries. i wear a target vest. and for when it snows i just put a different back wheel on it. same everything just too lazy to put the nobby on the hard way. suspension seat post, and a nice comfortable seat.

 

[Walrus]

I'm planning to build a wet weather bike for winter training. It's going to be an aluminium MTB frame with road slicks and upright handlebars. Have some questions however :

• Lights - Is a 4.8V one I got for $7 going to be enough?
• Brakes - V brakes vs disc brakes? How do they do in the wet

Thanks guys.

Given you live in New Zealand, I would doubt you ride in the snow that often.
Lights
If you are riding at dusk, then you need bright lights. If you are riding in the dark, then I find the smaller lights to be fine. I recently bought a Giant 5 LED light for $AUD30 and it is BRIGHT! It doesn't cost much to be safe.

Brakes
Disk brakes will generally outperform V brakes in the wet, cause with V Brakes the rim gets wet and the pads can't grip. A disk won't get as wet in the rain/wet, so it's more grippy. Someone recently told me that hydraulic disk brakes are much better than cable disk brakes. If you can't afford the upgrade to disk brakes, you could consider wet weather brake pads.