Why are road brakes so cr*p?

The Ultegra brakes on my road bike never seem to work well enough. I have spent hours fidling with centering, cable oiling, adjustment etc to little avail.Why am I asking this question on a mtb forum? Because my roadie mates shrug their shoulders and say ‘they’re all like that’.
Have I just been spoiled by a decade of discs on mtbs or is there some fix like a super duper brake block that will transform my braking?

never found road brakes to be bad, and I ride down stuff like this….

Try some canti’s with a good dose of brake judder thrown in, your Ultegra will probably then be viewed more favourably.

You’re probably too young to realise that before mountain bikes with cantilever brakes ALL bikes had crap brakes and you’ve been spoiled even more by disc brakes. Try a bike with rod brakes and chromed steel rims and you’ll see what I mean.

Get a hand-exerciser and strengthen your forearm muscles. Ride your road bike the way you should and you will only need to use the brakes when you arrive at the café.

Come on iDave, where’s that? I immediately thought Glen Douglas between Helensburgh and Arrochar, but it doesn’t have crash barriers like that…

FOG, you maybe just need to lower your expectations, my Ultegras feel great to me, and I have absolute confidence in them on steep/wet/twisty roads, but I don’t expect them to work the same as discs, I’ll brake earlier and more gently as opposed to piling up to stuff and slamming the brakes on at the last minute like I would with discs.

What year are they? The previous gen 105/Ultegra stuff had dodgy pads (way too hard a compound). Replacing with Swisstop green or Koolstop salmons made a huge difference to them. You aren’t going to get hydraulic disc levels of braking but, in the dry at least, my Ultegra brakes stop me about as well as I’d want them to.

That ^^ is the Saleve, near Geneva, 10km of steep and twisty

Road brakes are supposed to slow you down rather than stop you dead.

Because most roadies have never tried a hydraulic brake, therefore don’t know that brakes can be better, therefore don’t demand better brakes.
Only ones I have come accross that were any good were Magura HS66 and HS77s, although these didn’t work with STI shifters, SS or downtube ones only.
However, I was thinking about thsi the other day, riding with a friend who has DI2 electronic shifters. I asked her if it would be possible to mount the buttons onto something like an HS77 lever, problem solved (This is someone who is on the GB team and is olympic hopeful, and therefore we can assume knows what she on about with bikes, and yet it turns out she has never come across hydraulic brakes before… which I think proves my first point nicely)
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[EDIT]

Road brakes are supposed to slow you down rather than stop you dead

Lucky no-one has ever had to do an emergancy stop on a road bike then isn’t it 🙄 Better brakes are just better, just because you have more power doesn’t mean you have to use it all the time.

I think the brakes are 05 but don’t know if the pads are original but at least a change of pads is a cheap and easy start. Although flattered about assumptions about my age, I started mtbing before v-brakes and had many awful brake set ups on old bikes. It just seems that road brakes have come nowhere near as far as MTB brakes and most roadies aren’t that bothered. I certainly don’t hammer up to things and slap the anchors on- that would lead to me sailing through junction or whatever I was stopping for. I don’t expect disc levels of braking, I just don’t want to give three months notice in writing every time I stop.

I’ve got Soras, which are absolutely fine. New pads maybe?

Good quality dual pivot road brakes will slow you down to the point where the limit of adhesion of the tyres is the limiting factor not the brake. Better quality brake pads should help and try using plenty of front brake.

Of course riding in the rain or with many carbon rim wheels then the braking is poor to rubbish.

Lucky no-one has ever had to do an emergancy stop on a road bike then isn’t it Better brakes are just better, just because you have more power doesn’t mean you have to use it all the time.

Meh, I’ve ridden hydraulics for years, the biggest difference I noticed moving to calliper brakes on the road bike were that they were quiet, they were easily adjusted, the pads never rub, and that its much easier to straighten a buckled wheel with a spoke key than it is to straighten a warped rotor.

Just because better brakes are better doesn’t necessarily mean they’re better 8)

Edit: FOG, have you checked the action of the brakes with the cable detached? My old Tiagras got quite sticky around the pivot if I didn’t occasionally dismantle, clean and adjust.

Try swisstop green pads, and make sure the braking surface on the rim is clean and true.

When I started road biking a couple of years back I was actually pleasantly suprised how well the brakes performed compared to memories from years back.

I find my 05 Chorus brakes perfectly good for braking from over 50mph into a hairpin bend at 20mph. I do use swisstop pads though. I certainly feel no real need for disc brakes on road bikes (although I have been using one for commuting for the last 2 years)

I can lock my wheels up too easily with my campag brakes. Not that much grip in a road tyre.

Thought the same too OP.

Changed my brake pads for Swiss Stops softer compound and behold excellent brakes 🙂

My Winter bike (2008) still had its hard compound Tiagra pads which eats your rims. Holding on the brakes for dear life and waiting for the bike to slow down as you look around…

New pads, clean rims, decent tyres and bingo.

Never will be as great as disc brakes so don’t go nuts in the city centre/busy areas till you hit the open road.

My Ultegras will lock up the wheels in pretty much any condition.

Sora or Tiagras on the winter bike are a bet less effective in the rain but will lock up if really hammering them.

It is very easy to lock up the rear wheel when braking hard on a road bike. I find the reason you can’t slow down as quick on the road bike isn’t down to how strong the brakes are but other factors like grip available through skinny tyres and weight distribution.

Think how much the fork dips on the mtb breaking very hard. The distribution of force must be pretty different.

As long as you can lock up your rear wheel (probably the front too but not suggesting you try that) on the road bike I’d say the brakes were as powerful as they need to be. If you can’t they’re definitely not working 100%.

Swiss Cool Stops

Are you sure? There are Koolstop brakes and Swiss stop brakes. Is your username relevant in this? 😆

EDIT ooh you cheater

Definitely try different pads, i’ve got Dura ace pads in some tektro road brakes and i could put myself over the bars if i tried, rims can also make a difference, when i swapped wheels from some planet x ones to Fulcrums the braking was instantly better.

Ultegra’s wrok fine for me too, just been out for a road ride in the wet & they’re still good. 🙂

Ultegras should work really well, new cables/pads?

+1 for Swissstop green and clean rims. Yes they wear out slightly faster but if you descend like Cancellara you’ll not be using them much

Either there is something wrong with your calipers or something wrong with your mechanical skills 😉 I have had a set of ultegras on my road bike for the last year and haven’t touched them once?

BTW don’t set your brake pads too close to your rims as you will find you will have more issues with alignment and rubbing if the wheels are flexy or a bit out of true?

i use the swissstop greens in my 105 calipers and keep my rims clean as best as i can.

having said that, i generally find the shimano calipers are terrible. I had campag skeleton calipers on an old bike and SRAM force ones on another and they are MUCH better off the peg than the shimanos.

If you want a cheaper alternative to Swisstops, look at Shimano R55C3 pads, about half the price as the Swissstops, and I find them just as good (using 6700 caliper / STI)

Because most roadies have never tried a hydraulic brake, therefore don’t know that brakes can be better, therefore don’t demand better brakes.

???? what drivel.
decent road brakes will lock up and throw you over the bars (if you so desire)
i have no problems with ultegra/DA brakes with stock pads. performance in the wet is slightly reduced but i find it matches the reduced grip from the tyres. the limits are not with the brakes but available grip from a small contact patch of a 23c.

strange curly-wurly bars too

e reduced grip from the tyres. the limits are not with the brakes but available grip from a small contact patch of a 23c.

A commonly believed myth.

Because most roadies have never tried a hydraulic brake, therefore don’t know that brakes can be better, therefore don’t demand better brakes.

Bobbins on two counts. Firstly, most roadies aren’t just roadies but also own MTBs as well so know perfectly well what discs (or at the very least, Vs) are like.
Secondly, there’s nothing wrong with road bike brakes for use on, well, road bikes. You either need to set yours up properly or get some better skills. As said by others it’s tyre adhesion which becomes the limiting factor. It’s not that long ago that Campag de-tuned their rear brakes to make them less powerful.

I wouldn’t want my road brake to be any stronger.
This guy should try using his before he gets to the corner:

Because if Sram/Shimano/Campag made a really decent brake for road bikes, the UCI would promptly ban it.

A commonly believed myth.

but decent road brakes are powerful enough to lock up/skid/throw you over the bars. caliper brakes offer modulation to avoid this if used properly 🙄

A commonly believed myth.

How so?

As the little video above demonstrates, on a road bike especially going downhill your biggest problem is not the power of the brakes but the weight transfer and consequent tendency for the rear wheel to lock and skid.

Because most roadies have never tried a hydraulic brake, therefore don’t know that brakes can be better, therefore don’t demand better brakes.

When Shimano brought out their new Dura Ace a few years ago (previous generation to what’s out there now), the pros said it was actually too powerful so they cut a little bit out of the back of it to increase flex and take out some of the power. Actually improved the modulation too.

A well set up set of road brakes should be more than powerful enough to lock the wheels in any conditions. No point giving any more power since once the wheel is locked it’s only skidding, not slowing down in a controlled way.

Try the brake pad replacement but first of all i would always fit new shimano inners and outers and make sure theres no kinks at all. A few drops of rock & roll cable oil if you have it and see how you get on.

*Its scotland. Cable oil even in new shimano cables is always a good thing!

Going by how much of a difference new quality cables make to all cable operated brakes,i would try this before buying any brake pads. Check the old pads to see if anything has lodged its way into the rubber but you will probably find the best upgrade being fresh quality cables.

Best gif ever.

I think the brakes are 05

Brake pivot rust? Ruined my old dual-pivot brakes. Couldn’t find any replacement pivots anywhere either.

I have ’05 Ultegras and found them far better than my previous Tiagras, then I got another bike with Ultegra SLs and they were better again – I guess current Ultegras are better than the SLs? Anyway, I found the old Ultegras pretty poor in the wet and thought as the pads were pretty worn I’d get some new ones, now they’re dramatically better – I got these bargains:

£10 for 2 sets with spare pads and some cables too.

http://www.chainreactioncycles.com/Models.aspx?ModelID=66285

Because most roadies have never tried a hydraulic brake, therefore don’t know that brakes can be better, therefore don’t demand better brakes.

This seems to have been taken slightly wrongly. Yes, ‘better’ does usualy mean more power, but it also means better modulation, nicer lever feel, less maintenance, etc, etc. My HS33s are not notcably more powerful than a well set-up XTR V-brake but they are just ‘better.’ My Dura-Ace calipers are (relatively) useless, especially in the wet. Again this may not be entirely down to power, for example a disc will be usually be cleaner and drier than a rim. Also, a disc ca be made of the best material for stopping purposes, not like a rim which has other considerations too.