Road Brakes – will calipers become obsolete

No, it’s heavy rain that does it on road bikes.  If you never ride on steep hills in heavy rain then you’ll probably not have experineced it.

I live in Devon, ride a lot of Dartmoor, Exmoor and the Blackdowns, it’s frequently pissing it down, and the hills are steep, I have no bother stopping or slowing on my rim brake bikes on the road, likewise on my disc brake bikes.

If not pro or anti disc really, right now though I simply have no compelling reason to go for discs on my road bikes. There are however several good reasons to do so, and several good reasons not to do so, so it’s a case of weighing them up and making your own decision.

That doesn’t mean someone who makes a different decision is wrong, it just means their requirements and preferences are different, and that’s OK.

Rim brakes will never go away, they’ll always be around in some form another, both at the budget end and the boutique, but they are going to be mainstream and dare I say it, the default before long.

it’s frequently pissing it down, and the hills are steep, I have no bother stopping or slowing on my rim brake bikes on the road, likewise on my disc brake bikes.

Do you have roundabouts or T junctions immediately at the bottom of said steep hills?

I can’t explain it otherwise.  I pull the lever and I barely slow down.  You never get this?  You are ok with it?  I’m not. I mean, I can scrub off speed eventually, but there’s no capacity for emergency stop of any kind. Eventually isn’t really good enough.

First 105 then Ultegra, stock pads, both similar.  No obvious setup issues that I can see.

Rather than becoming obsolete I’d suggest that manufacturers will reduce choice as they’re trying to push disc braked bikes.

I have both, and they have differing good and bad points.

I’m not going to force anyone to go down either route it’s up to you.

BigJohn

These Weinmann Centre Pull brakes are what I have on my commuter (well, just the front as it’s fixed wheel).  Ancient but still more powerful than the Campag Record on my other road bike.  I got my first pair in about 1966 and I still think they’re lovely.  And, for rim brakes, never beaten.

A classy commuter with Nervex Pro lugs. 🙂

I’d say the same about my Mafac Racers, but I fitted Weinmann to my wife’s bikes. Good cables routed properly, the right pads, and they stop really well.

Just out of interest (and not trying to score points or anything) – would the road disc superfans here admit to being a bit nervous on a road bike?

No, it’s heavy rain that does it on road bikes.  If you never ride on steep hills in heavy rain then you’ll probably not have experineced it.

Really? I’ve lived in (very) hilly places. You could almost call them mountainous, and never had an issue. But then it’s always been regularly serviced, well looked after brakes with good pads.

The real wins for discs are the lack of constraint on tyre size, the lack of rim wear, and—probably most of all—the lack of horrible black rubber-and-aluminium paste that endlessly coats and stains everything.

Which is why i’d have discs on a training bike, as when the weather is that bad you need the bigger tyres, brakes eat rims and you really generate a lot of brake juice. Guards help too….. but i’m not spending 1000-1200 to upgrade my perfectly functional training bike to discs.

If i was racing in that sort of weather, i can fit 28s in my current bike and it got scrubbed clean after every race (and no guards in racing anyway. So i’m going to get shitted up to the nth degree anyway. White kit is a bad idea whatever you do.) And tyres only last a month, of racing so grubby sidewalls have never really become an issue……

Just hoping calipers don’t become obsolete before i get my next road bike, my current favorite is getting on a bit. The next one should (hopefully) last as long. With caliper brakes.

Do you have roundabouts or T junctions immediately at the bottom of said steep hills?

Yes, T junctions, crossroads, sharp bends, tractors, ponies, sheep, stone walls, all the usual countryside hazards, and obviously the urban ones too when not on the moor.

 I pull the lever and I barely slow down.  You never get this?  You are ok with it?  I’m not.

No I don’t experience that, so hence there’s no issue with me being ‘OK with it’ as it’s not something I experience, my brakes* work, even in the rain**, hard to believe maybe but true! Apart from the initial scrub-to-bite sensation there’s not much difference in terms of available deceleration, and that sensation is only an issue upon first application after a while of being wet with no use, and happens with the discs too, marginally quicker to bite with the discs but we’re only talking a second or less.

I can’t explain it otherwise

Likewise, I can’t explain why none of my club mates overshoot all the junctions and die a horrible death everytime we go for a ride in the rain, yet miraculously they’re all still alive, and even more miraculously we don’t suffer disc-brake induced pile-ups when the disc riders are at the front of the group either 😉

*Ultegra 6600 (so not even current gen.) on short drop bikes, R650s/A550/Tektro 559 on long drop bikes, with a mix of either Koolstop Salmon, Swisstop, or Fibrax pads.

EDIT – oh yeah, one bike has Centaur Skeletons, they work too.

*Sure, they make terrible noises and grind my rims away, but they still work.

Likewise, I can’t explain why none of my club mates overshoot all the junctions and die a horrible death everytime we go for a ride in the rain

Just to be clear, that’s not what I’m suggesting happens.

I have a feeling that your definition of ‘work ok’ is not the same as mine.

They won’t become obsolete. Too many traditionalists in road. See above.

Well until the the traditionalists become obsolete.

Full carbon wheels and calipers are grim in the wet thou 🙂

Just to be clear, that’s not what I’m suggesting happens.

Just to be uber-clear, the smiley indicates it was in jest anyway 😉

I’d be pretty fed up, not to mention scared if I suffered the kind of braking you described too. Being able to stop safely is a fairly key requirement and I wouldn’t put up with it either. If disc brakes have solved that problem for you then that’s fine, but I’m just a tiny bit irked that you’re implying it’s the only solution to that problem, and also that you extrapolate from your own experience that anyone else using rim brakes must also suffer that same woeful performance, we don’t. Some may do, but not everyone, so clearly there’s more to it than just the brake type.

I have a feeling that your definition of ‘work ok’ is not the same as mine.

Maybe, maybe not, my definition of ‘work ok’ is:

“good enough that I don’t find disc brake bikes offer me any braking advantage over rim brake bikes for road use”

It offers me other things like lack of rim wear, wider choice of tyres, less black gunge over everything etc. But braking performance is not something I find lacking on my rim brake bikes, even in bad weather.

As some form of ‘proof’ though, not that it is, but anyway… I do most of my riding on a rim braked bike, by choice, even though I have a disc braked bike available to me. And the last 2 bikes I bought and built were deliberately rim brake.

Like I said, I have no compelling reason to go disc*. Others have chosen differently, I’m OK with that.

* for ‘normal’ road riding, for commuting and touring it’s a different matter, once you add a few panniers worth of weight and/or a trailer I find the discs do offer more power, but then I’ve got a lot more weight to deal with there so different kettle of fish.

Well until the the traditionalists become obsolete.

Don’t forget all the neo-roadies. Tradition is probably even more important to them! Chapeau to your bidon and all that!

I think current sales and industry marketing answers the question. Disk braked bikes are being pushed heavily by the manufacturers (a new standard that requires everyone to effectively buy a new bike is a marketing dream) and a lot of consumers seem to be happy to move to discs. I think discs will become the default option for new stuff relatively soon, but the legacy market will mean that rim brakes will be around for a long, long time. There are still some issues to iron out for race-service, but I’m sure these are not insurmountable, and now that BC have cleared disc brakes for racing, another barrier to adoption has been removed. It’s probably going to be fun for the service car at your local race for a few years until things transition!

I’ve run discs on my commuting road bike for 15 years now, and never considered going back to rim brakes. My old race bike has 2001 Dura-ace calipers which are still excellent brakes, but if I was going to buy a new road bike now I would get discs.

It’s probably going to be fun for the service car at your local race for a few years until things transition!

I want to come and do your local races I’ve seen 3 service cars in the last 5 years of racing 2/3/4s. A puncture is race over for most people at the lower levels as they don’t have the team or ability to chase back on.

We had virtually the same conversations about CX discs when they were introduced. Not a great deal of canti options on new bikes these days.

In reality it doesn’t really matter. I’ll be going discs on my next bike now they are race legal. Would have them on my current bike had it been the case 2 years ago.

would the road disc superfans here admit to being a bit nervous on a road bike

Nope, I’ve been riding road bikes since 1993, I’ve ridden a lot in the UK including chain gangs, club runs, lightweight touring, commuting and sportives, I was a BC road coach starting in the late 90s up to the mid 2000s, and have ridden thousands of miles in groups with no problems on rim brakes.

I’ve also ridden extensively in the Pyrenees, the Alps and the Dolomites in both fantastic dry conditions and miserable wet and snow. Again almost all of that has been on rim braked bikes. I even went to Strada Bianche the weekend before last and rode that on a 1996 cantilever braked steel CX bike.

I built up a disc brake bike (a Bokeh) last year with eTap HRD and I like it a lot – one of the key reasons is because I’m riding it with big ie 48mm road tyres (or 2.1″ off-road tyres), and the disc brakes make it very convenient to do so which rim brakes wouldn’t. There are some downsides – squailing – but overall I’m happy, and i don’t miss the manky rim sludge that cakes rims and brakes when riding in poor weather.

I think you have to ask yourself are you a racer or not, i can see them becoming more popular in races like Roubaix and Flanders where the ability to run a 30c tyre and to be able to carry on riding with damage to rim might become popular, but it will take time for die hard racers.

Personally i had 3 road bikes when i first got into the tarmac side of things 8 years ago all with caliper brakes, current bike is the first with discs and i really like, but then i am not a racer, preferring distance and audax events.

What opened my eyes was a couple of years ago, coming down a 20% descent on Tour de Yorkshire raining so hard it was like riding down a river, me at 95kg on disc brakes managed to make the left hand turn at the bottom, the guy next to me on a very nice Parlee and carbon wheels who weighed no more that 65kg was braking and with his carbon rims, little was happening and the poor bugger couldn’t make the left hand turn and went through the windscreen of a Transit. So whilst that is an extreme example, i do believe they can offer greater braking power for the “average man”, not everyone has the skills of Sagan.

I also found doing a 500km, 24 hour event, that my hands were less tired, requiring less strength to brake once i got to the sleep-deprived part of the ride.

But is all personal preference, i can see disc brakes coming more into it, at present mostly on the insistence of sponsors, weight isn’t an issue, new Emonda and the like are sub 6.8kg with discs, i think it comes down more to wheel change and alignment of caliper with disc and a quick change thru-axle being standardised between all the bikes. Until then, the rim brake is faster to change, means that any wheel from the neutral mechanics will fit and will take a long time to change racers minds to switch to discs for 90% of what they do, but they are at the top of their game.

Obsolete, no. A minority of sales on new bikes, yes.

Id not buy a new road bike without discs, but then I’d not buy a new road bike to have discs.

that you extrapolate from your own experience that anyone else using rim brakes must also suffer that same woeful performance, we don’t.

But how else do you explain it?

It may be that in the Valleys, the roads are a lot busier than Exmoor so there’s something on the roads which is affecting grip.  But in heavy rain the roads are washed pretty clean, as is the rest of my bike.

Scud’s experience rings true to me.

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would the road disc superfans here admit to being a bit nervous on a road bike

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Nope, I’ve been riding road bikes since 1993, I’ve ridden a lot in the UK including chain gangs, club runs, lightweight touring, commuting and sportives, I was a BC road coach starting in the late 90s up to the mid 2000s, and have ridden thousands of miles in groups with no problems on rim brakes.

Oy! You’re not a superfan, you’ve admitted above that you’re not, so stop it.

TBH what Molgrips describes I have experienced to some degree, in some conditions it takes a couple of wheel revolutions to build up a “grinding stopping paste” that gets alu rim brakes at least working. I suspect that rims being too clean or caked in a bit of mud are the main reason for this, which is probably why I’ve never noticed it being a problem on the road. I’ve never run carbon rims or anything though, so maybe that would be a problem, although I understand that some of the coatings etc. are pretty decent these days.

I think the problem most people that are happy with rim brakes have here is being told that we MUST ride discs on all our bikes. And on some bikes they’re just not the best solution.

that you extrapolate from your own experience that anyone else using rim brakes must also suffer that same woeful performance, we don’t.

But how else do you explain it?

I haven’t attempted to explain it yet, but numerous thing spring to mind* which may or may not be the case, and likewise there may be factors I’ve not considered, but I wouldn’t jump to the conclusion that all rim brakes are as poor as you experienced.

Surely you can see the issues with extrapolating from one (or limited) sample size especially when others are on this very thread saying that they do not experience the same thing?

“I experience X, therefore all other people must experience X” is never a strong starting position.

“I experience X, I wonder if other people also do…” would be a better place to start, and as soon as someone pops up saying they have a contrary experience the question needs to change to “what is the difference between us”. As you point out, it might be environmental, it might be setup, it might be something physiological.

Changing to discs have clearly fixed your problem, but that’s not to say ‘lack of discs’ was the cause, or that changing to discs was necessarily the only solution. If rim brake performance was or is as universally poor as you have experienced then it’s hard to see how anyone riding bikes in the rain would have made it through the last century alive, especially when older brim brakes were genuinely worse!

Scud’s experience rings true to me.

Scud specifically mentioned carbon rims in that anecdote, and some carbon rims are notably poorer performing than alu, and especially so int he wet, but at no point (yet) have we been specifically discussing carbon rims. Some of the newer coatings when used with appropriate pads are at least on par with Alu now anyway.

Like I mention though, if performance with all rim brakes were as universally poor as that then the poor chap who ended up colliding with the transit would not have been the only one. If they were all that bad then everyone (or at least a lot more) people would have also overshot that corner, which goes abck to the “what was different” bit of the question, in this case it appears the answer was “carbon rims with poor braking performance”.

* such as, in no particular order

– pads (compound, quality or setup)

– cables (as above, plus routing)

– rims (damage, material difference, contaminants)

– poor matching of components wrt. MA of levers and calipers

– poor quality flexy components

The last two probably don’t apply if you were using properly matched Shimano brakes, but there’s more than a few bikes out there with NS-SLR levers mated to S-SLR or even traditional/SLR pull calipers which can make a very big difference to performance, like 20-30% in some cases, add some crappy cables and setup to the mix and you could easily be at ~50% compared to a properly matched and setup brake.

Oy! You’re not a superfan, you’ve admitted above that you’re not, so stop it.

sorry 😉

I can wholeheartedly recommend eTap though…

“I also found doing a 500km, 24 hour event, that my hands were less tired, requiring less strength to brake once i got to the sleep-deprived part of the ride.”

Ah. This. I did a 1200km ride in 115 hours on the Uncle John I mentioned earlier. as well as the 1st TNR (did I mention this was with a broken femur?). But enough willy waving: After these I can really see the advantage in having to apply less pressure on a lever to brake.

edit: (how do we do the quote thing now?)

Out of interest, those who don’t like discs on the road, have they ridden one for any length of time? I’ve ridden (and still own) both and have a place for both in my collection.

Several hundred km, probably 1000+ all in. On several models/manufacturers.

And it’s not that I don’t like them, is just that they don’t do anything appreciably better than the rim brakes I have on my race bikes.

On the other hand they are better than the rim brakes on my training bike, or at least, they are better suited to the riding I do on it. But not £1000+ better.

And to be fair, once the weather is at the point they are noticeably better, or better enough to be worthwhile, I’d be training on an MTB anyway. Which has disks and studs…..

Out of interest, those who don’t like discs on the road, have they ridden one for any length of time?

Threads like this always seem to bring a out a few comments about luddites, traditionalists and such, sometimes blatent, sometimes thinly veiled. I don’t think you meant it in that way but from your post it seems as if you have the impression people are being negative about discs on the road, when actually I think it’s more subtle than that, it’s a ‘lack of positive’ rather than an actual negative.

Since I’m such a pedant I actually went back and checked every single post in this thread and found nobody actually saying they “don’t like discs on the road”.

I found a couple of people who have been unhappy due to to mechanical issues and excessive squealing, which are arguably problems with their bike rather than the concept as a whole as it’s another case of not everyone has that issue. Even if that is actually an objection to discs on the road, it’s a fairly rare objection.

I found several more people (me included) saying they aren’t anti-disc, and actually find the performance good and see some other benefits beyond braking performance, but simply put, find no reason for them being necessary for a road racing type bike.

That’s the sticking point, it seems like another case of extra expense, compatibility kerfuffle and change being foisted upon the consumer without really being necessary, or at least not offering enough of a benefit for it to become the mainstream option.

I don’t think it’ll be a problem long term though, niche and custom will still provide a rim brake option for those that want it*, and discs will become the default in the mainstream, they’ll have some pros and some cons, but ultimately there’s little anyone can do about it…

*heck, you can even eschew indexing and STI if you want and still build a new bike with downtube shifters if that’s your thing, I recently did 🙂

EDIT – I also know a guy with DT friction shifters and discs, so try and  stuff that little paradox up your luddite hole and see what happens! 😀

I’m ambivalent. If there’s no weight penaty, no squealing and easy to maintain, I’d accept them. That rules out hydraulics for me on the road, even though I love them off road.

I think two things are more likely, amedias:

1) One person’s idea of ‘ok’ is not the same as another’s.  After all, I did stop at my roundabout.

2) One person’s exact combination of amount of water, terrain, road layout and brake conditions has not been experienced by the other.

amedias wrote:

That’s the sticking point, it seems like another case of extra expense, compatibility kerfuffle and change being foisted upon the consumer without really being necessary, or at least not offering enough of a benefit for it to become the mainstream option.

I don’t think it’ll be a problem long term though, niche and custom will still provide a rim brake option for those that want it*, and discs will become the default in the mainstream, they’ll have some pros and some cons, but ultimately there’s little anyone can do about it…

Which is what I “don’t like” about road discs. For the riding I do, and lots of other people do (clearly plenty, even possibly the majority on this thread) they’re unnecessary and I don’t like being forced to change. I should admit I don’t have a road bike with disc brakes, I’ve not even ever ridden one, but I was an early adopter of disc brakes on mountain bikes and have plenty of anecdotes demonstrating the advantages of them over rim brakes*. I would also happily have discs on my commuter/hack/training/touring bike which has guards, gets ridden in bad weather and if speccing from scratch I’d put much bigger tyres on. Oh and it also has DT shifters, though that’s down to what I had in the spares box rather than a conscious decision and I’d upgrade to STI along with the discs given the choice – though I do approve of the concept of discs and DT shifters! I’d certainly have chosen to put discs on the tandem when I got that if they were available at the time (it was bought before discs were even mainstream for MTB) – that mainly gets used on the road with road tyres.

* from back in the day when rim brakes were still quite common on MTBs I raced quite often with teammates who had them. One notable race we were riding through thick clogging mud (in Utah of all places!) and whilst the two of us with discs could keep going we had to stop and wait for the others with rim brakes to clear their brakes. In the same race we were doing multiple 3000ft vertical high speed descents which eventually resulted in the tyre failing on one of the rim brake bikes – I’d actually already had exactly the same issue racing with the same chap on a steep twisty road descent in North Wales which involved lots of braking. However with my disc brakes I got brake fade and had trouble stopping on the final 3000ft descent to the finish and on a previous event I had to bail off the road onto a verge when I had complete disc brake failure on a descent due to the pads wearing out.

But how else do you explain it?

Maybe you aren’t as good at setting up brakes as you think you are?

1 could definitely be a matter of perception for sure, but as I already mentioned, the kind of lack of performance you described would scare me too, and if I ever felt that my brakes put me in danger (regardless of the type of system) they’d be getting changed/fixed pretty damn quick! I laid out my definition of ‘OK’ as being:

“good enough that I don’t find disc brake bikes offer me any braking advantage over rim brake bikes for road use”

But still, perception or otherwise the reason for the poor performance of your rim brakes has not yet been ascertained, ergo it’s still a poor extrapolation that all rim brakes would perform the same. Your ‘fix’ was disc brakes, but it could just have easily been ‘a better performing rim brake’.

2 is pretty much the definition of “not a universal problem”. If it’s a situation that specific then it absolutely does not make sense to extrapolate beyond that situation.

All I take issue with is your assertion that rim brakes are universally poor in wet conditions. they’re not.

Just like I wouldn’t say all disc brakes are universally good, I can conjure up enough crappy cable discs from £99 supermarket-special full-sussers that can’t even reliably bring a bike to a halt on a flat dry road to disprove that.

Maybe you aren’t as good at setting up brakes as you think you are?

A possibility.  Got any tips?

2 is pretty much the definition of “not a universal problem”. If it’s a situation that specific then it absolutely does not make sense to extrapolate beyond that situation.

No, but if that situation comes up often for me then discs would make sense for me.  I’m happy for people to use rim brakes, but it’s equally invalid to suggest that no-one needs them and it’s pointless – as some seem to be.

We’ve discussed how the film of water does stop rim brakes working for a few revolutions until it’s scrubbed off.  But if it’s wet enough, then the rim picks water back up before it gets around to the brake again, so the scrubbing doesn’t work,  maybe?

molgrips wrote:

Maybe you aren’t as good at setting up brakes as you think you are?

A possibility.  Got any tips?

Get somebody else to do it 😉

@aracer, I think that’s the point I was trying to make, not an actual ‘dislike of discs on road bikes’ in terms of their performance and use but opposition to the idea of ‘changing road bikes to use discs’, ie: If someone could flip a magic button and your favourite bike suddenly had disc brakes with no other changes (weight, ergonomics, expense etc.) then you wouldn’t dislike the experience of them in use.

You might dislike other things about them but the actual ‘way they work’ isn’t the issue. And I don’t think it is for the majority, which is why asking the question about whether any naysayers have spent time on them is largely moot in my view, the issue isn’t with what they’re like to use, it’s all the other stuff that goes with it.

The objections are rooted in the forced/coerced change without sufficient benefit.

I don’t think you meant it in that way but from your post it seems as if you have the impression people are being negative about discs on the road, when actually I think it’s more subtle than that, it’s a ‘lack of positive’ rather than an actual negative.

I mostly ask as I’ve met people who would “never buy disc brakes” who have not so much as turned a single pedal stroke with one. The last guy I met who said this said he’d spun a wheel in a bike shop and the rim brake and disc brake stopped just as easily so “what’s the point?”. By all means, if your riding doesn’t find any benefit from them then all well and good but there are people out there who have a firm opinion despite having never tried both options. Likewise there are loads of people who rarely if ever ride in the wet or adverse conditions who feel they need disc brakes.

Accepted dogma infects a lot of things. Alu frames being a harsh ride is another example, it CAN be true but isn’t ALWAYS true.

Obviously the buyer pays their money and takes their choice. I was just interested in whether people who don’t see the point of disc brakes have put in lots of mileage in variable conditions.

No, but if that situation comes up often for me then discs would make sense for me.  I’m happy for people to use rim brakes, but it’s equally invalid to suggest that no-one needs them and it’s pointless – as some seem to be.

Aye, as I said, discs was clearly ‘a’ fix for you, and possibly even the only fix, possibly not, but that’s a leap you’ve already made.

And I don’t think you’ll find anyone on this thread who has said that no-one needs them and that they’re pointless, several people have said that for certain uses and situations they make a great deal of sense (me included), but lament the fact that they’re creeping out to other areas and uses where they don’t necessarily offer benefit and aren’t needed.

I mostly ask as I’ve met people who would “never buy disc brakes” who have not so much as turned a single pedal stroke with one. The last guy I met who said this said he’d spun a wheel in a bike shop and the rim brake and disc brake stopped just as easily so “what’s the point?”.

Ah, you’ve encountered idiots, sadly we’ve all met some of them 😉

I don’t have discs yet.

Maybe you aren’t as good at setting up brakes as you think you are?

So they work very nicely in the dry.  Still not as good as V brakes or discs but well enough.  My issue is the dramatic reduction in performance in certain situations.  So cables, pad position, gear match all fine in the dry and in moderate wet.

Blimey this has evolved into another circular “debate“… Who’d a thunk it?

In answer to the OP, Yeah I do think over time Discs on the road will become the norm, but the period of transition for that mainstream adoption will probably be quite protracted, and a Rim brake road bike bought today won’t be “obsolete” for a good decade or more.

The thing that will probably help prompt the transition more than anything is the fact that once you separate braking from the rim it gives more freedom on rim/tyre dimensions, shape, construction and clearances (a bit like “Gravel” bikes are seeing already), so while the UCI are creeping towards discs in competition, I’d still keep an eye on the corresponding wheel/tyre rules might change…

And of course note that most UCI compliant bikes sold will probably not actually be raced…

But right this minute I would rather spend money on leccy gear shifting than disc brakes, and I do quite like the idea of road discs, but I’m also firmly in the “Ain’t broke don’t fix it camp” finding my existing cale pulled, rim callipers perfectly adequate and happy enough with more “Traditional” 622mm rims and 23~25mm clinchers for the moment.

Of course YMMV…

I don’t have discs yet.

Interesting! I must have made an assumption there then, or misread, I apologise.

So they work very nicely in the dry.  Still not as good as V brakes or discs but well enough

Doubly interesting! If I’m reading into that correctly it sounds like they’re not brilliant in the dry either? (even if ‘good enough’) So degradation in the wet from ‘good enough’ could easily approach ‘awful’. What you should be aiming for is degradation from ‘excellent’ to ‘good enough’.

In that case I seriously suggest giving the setup some scrutiny, maybe with external assistance if you feel you’ve done all you can, if for no other reason than to confirm to yourself that you’ve done all you can.

If there is nothing obvious mechanically in terms of mismatched or poor quality components or poorly adjusted pads then you need to look at setup.

IME cables are often the most commonly overlooked aspect. Friction losses can add up quickly, either from lack of lube, poor/tight routing, damaged liners etc. As can flex induced by poorly squared/finished ends beeding/settling before taping outers etc.

Just for info give us a run down of the rim brake system you’re running.

Shifters*, calipers**, pads, rims and whether or not your fitted the cables and any steps you took to dress and seat the ends properly.

Maybe we’ll be able to offer something you’ve overlooked, maybe not…

*including actual model numbers

**including drop and how far down the slots the pads are as this has an appreciable difference on the MA of the caliper.

I don’t have discs yet.

Madness!

Rim brakes won’t become obsolete, they will become more prevalent though.

I just don’t like the feel of rim brakes. Too variable with weather, too spongy and variable with cable routing, thickness, outer type etc. Need adjusting, need releasing when removing wheel. All just faff that I don’t have to deal with on a bike with discs. My discs don’t squeal, they don’t bind (of course they rub lightly, but the seals pull the pistons back 95% of the way so there’s almost no load on the wheel and it shifts fully after a couple of rotations). They have literally never failed on me in 15 years of riding in all weathers, on several bikes. Their performance doesn’t change when bolted to a slightly noodly fork, or in the rain, snow, mud, cold. They don’t spread grey mush around my bike in the wet.

The only reason they’ll stick about is Luddites and legacy hardware.