road bike with disc brakes

A road bike with disc brakes, have any of you guys seen these b4?<br /><br />http://www.giantbicycles.com/us/030.000.000/030.000.006.asp?lYear=2003&amp;bikesection=8830&amp;range=138&amp;model=10658<br /><br />

 

Not yet, but it certainly is an interesting idea and makes sense on a touring bike, if you for example buckle your rim badly your braking will not be affected and disc brakes do perform better than cantilevers.<br /><br />It might be a bit heavy for racing though.<br />

 

Touring bike though, so I can understand. Don't some racing tandems have discs these days? Makes a lot of sense with the extra weight you are carrying in either case, I've heard some horribly tortured tandem brakes coming into downhill corners...

 

the discs were featured on roadbikereview and the Avid site<br /><br />Personally after my experience on some steep downhills in Sydney i'd LOVE a front disc (i'm quite heavy and i melted a set of pads last month)<br /><br />as long as the weight penalty wasn't too excessive<br /><br />the other problem i can see is the issue of compatibility with trick wheelsets, i mean you can't just whack a set of kysriums on unless they start making disc compatible hubs

 

I 've seen a cyclo-cross bike with disc brakes before on the training for the worldchampionships in zolder. De japanse owner only rode it during practice the bike got bannend before the main event.

 

you raodies are such weight weenies ;D<br /><br />I would think that discs would be a great advantage in the rain!

 

i checked the Avid and shimano sites for the weights of calipers and discs and found out that each disc brake weighs 361g while a pair (front and rear) of 105 calipers weighs 352g and a pair of dura ace calipers weigh 317g<br /><br />so if you ran front and rear discs you would be up for about 350-400g extra but you only really need the front disc and so you could get away with 1 disc (361g) + 1 caliper (176g for 105) thus only incurring about a 185g penalty.<br /><br />for bikes on a supermodel diet this may be enough to give their riders the shakes but for the rest of us i don't think its too bad<br /><br />now to see if i can get discs on decent wheels.....