in message .com, Duncan
Smith ') wrote:

Feeling somewhat unsatisfied with the V-brake setup on my cyclocross
forks I'm contemplating disc brakes as a solution and am wondering
what the relative merits of hydraulic vs mechanical are?

Remember that all bicycle brakes are essentially disk brakes. With rim
brakes the disk is bigger and the tyre is attached to it...

If you use a separate brake disk, it's further from the mud so unless
conditions are truly atrocious it doesn't get contaminated. Against this,
it's smaller so has less radiant area to dissipate energy as heat (but at
least the heat doesn't go into your tyres).

Apart from the mud issue, disk brakes are less, not more, effective than
rim brakes, because of poorer leverage and less radiant surface.

So far I can think that the mechanical variety are probably cheaper
and easier to fix/adjust at the road-side whereas the hydraulic sort
have more bling and stopping power (maybe - don't know why?)

Not more stopping power - more sensitivity, more precise control. This
really matters for technical mountain biking but probably doesn't matter
very much for cross.

--
(Simon Brooke) http://www.jasmine.org.uk/~simon/

;; All in all you're just another nick in the ball
-- Think Droid