Bicycling

2207 readers

14 users here now

A community for those who enjoy bicycling for any reason— utility, recreation, sport, or whatever!

Post your questions, experiences, knowledge, pictures, news, links, and (civil) rants.

Rules (to be added on an as-needed basis)

Comments and posts should be respectful and productive.
No ads or commercial spam, including linking to your own monetized content.
Linked content should be as unburdened by ads and trackers as possible.

Welcome!

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

wolfeh

How does breaking affect brakes? (programming.dev)

submitted 2 months ago by [email protected] to c/bicycling

14 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I was always wondering this. Imagine a steep descent. What is better for brake wear - braking constantly or more powerful just at the end? Anybody knows? Goes for both rim and disc brakes

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Yes, yes, But are you sure about that? If we ignore other factors (i.e. wind resistance) you have to convert fixed amount of kinetic energy to fixed amount of heat. Both should generate the same amount of heat, the difference would be that breaking in short bursts might create higher temperatures momentarily.

[–] spankmonkey 1 points 1 month ago

Breaking momentarily with gaps in between to allow time for heat to dissipate might help avoid brakes overheating on long and steep enough slopes. It would probably need to be quite long for it to be an issue.