justinfoil

"could be considered the most minimalist-looking brakes on test" Not sure you're using "minimalist" appropriately here. "Minimalism emphasized reducing art to its essentials, focusing on the object itself and the viewer's experience with as little mediation from the artist as possible." Sure seems like a lot of artist meditation with all the swoops and curves and pockets and bulges on these lever bodies. The TRPs are way more minimalist, just a few smooth solid slab surfaces smacked together.

@Jaks5: It's pretty obvious from looking just at the upper link that the center of rotation is not the "exact same". The the whole rear triangle rises up (lower link rotates CW looking from DS) to follow the arc of the upper link. It also looks like that might reverse about 2/3rds of the way through the travel, but hard to tell just from a picture (I'm not counting pixels for this armchair analysis). That's definitely something different than a single pivot. While you can't see much of the lower link in these pics, you can see that it's sloped towards to back (rear-most pivot is lower than front pivot, front pivot just slightly above chainring), and that's where some of that magic seperation of kinematics comes from. The force from the rear wheel under power is going to want to pull that link further into that downslope orientation from the top of the travel, adding AS, and is going to push it into the travel when deep in travel, reducing AS. Meanwhile, the pull from the chain will do the opposite through much of the travel, thus balancing AS. On the other side, when on the rear brakes, the backward force is going to want to pull that link straight back, and that competes with a torque trying to rotate the rear-triangle into the travel. That's the cool shit: internal forces between the links and frame parts "balancing" (pun intended) against external forces for get the desired kinematics.

@phops: "Aluminum bars usually bend before snapping." Simply not true. "Yes, poorly made ones can snap, but the rate of those to rate of carbon failure is minimal": Where is the data?

I don't understand how one can dislike more adjustments given no other differences, and in this case nothing was mentioned as worse than the prior. You just _leave them alone_! Set (in the middle) & forget! It should never be a con to have more adjustments, or a pro for the previous version for having less adjustments. (Unless those adjustments are constantly moving themselves, in which case that should be called out, but that is exceedinly rare.)

"The initial bite isn't as sharp as the strongest options like the Mavens, Saints, or Hopes, but once you pull into the stroke the power ramps up nicely." Is that at the max PAD setting? Or your preference? How does that change things? Does it approach the others at max? Does it fall off a cliff at min? Also very confusing as you also attributed initial bite to the pads and rotors, yet called out the other brakes without specifying the model specifics and all of them come with differing pads and rotors. Shit, even this brake comes with different pads. Were you comparing the initial bite only with those Blue pads? How much do the TRP pad options compare to the other brakes (I guess we have to assume the bitey-est pads on the others)?

@bendrew: All it takes is the right impact to make an alloy tube buckle or crack and greatly compromise the strength, leading to spectacular and rapid failure. You can say that about anything. And actually, precisely because of the lamination, carbon can be _less_ likely to experience catastrophic failure, because if layers do seperate from an impact (*citation needed), the stiffness will be compromised and that can be felt. That's how it was when I broke a frame: cracking, flexing, noticing. Tried to nurse it home and eventually it seperated, but far from catastrophy, all because of the layers. And there at the end you revealed a (the only?) real issue: overtightening clamps. Yes, that is a real issue, but so is too loose in various other places, so that's a skill issue, not a carbon issue.

@totaltoads: Yeah, so some weight savings with comparable strength is a great thing! XC race bikes got heavier because they went waaay down the path of "weight over everything" and bikes got fragile, especially compared to the direction the courses were going it. But tech moves forward and weights will come down again. Though maybe not as far before, because hopefully we learned the lesson that you can't win on a broken bike.

@bendrew: Sheared off arms (which I'm reading as seperated from the spindle) is probably not rock strikes, its a manufacturing issue, hence the _warranty_ as opposed to crash replacement. Shimano even had an issue with _alloy_ cranks coming apart, so it's not just a carbon thing. I've seen plenty of carbon cranks just absolutely mangled at the tip, holding up just fine. And rock strikes are inevitable and frequent where we ride.

@catbreath: Guess what? Aluminum alloys do what you described (I don't want to say "also" because I think you're pulling that out of your ass re: carbon). Not the microfractures per se, but aluminum has a "fatigue life", which means that even if it never goes past its original yeild limit, repeated cycles cause that limit to decrease and it will fail much lower than original strength. Steel has virtual infinite fatigue life, and a good CFRP has a much higher fatigue life than aluminum, with some approaching infinite in the use case of a bike frame ridden even with almost inhuman frequency. But fatigue life does not mean "micro fractures". I have a Stumpy that took a kicked up rock to the downtube within the first year that left a mark on the carbon, and now 6 years later the visible cracks on the outmost layer have propogated exactly zero. (I take pictures and compare every once in a while when doing maintenance, and looks exactly the same at 12 megapixels zoomed way in).

You've never seen alloy bars or cranks snap? I've seen them both, and they can be just as instant and traumatic as you imagine a carbon failure to be. I've seen alloy bars snap clean off at the stem, and snap clean off near the grip (the worst, arm and shoulder are definitely going to get all gouged up!). I've seen alloy cranks break clean off at either end, both with and without violent smashes that mangled pedal as well. I've also seen carbon bars take a tree to the face and keep on trucking, as well as take a similar impact and display obvious issues while at least staying together enough to gently ride home. What I have not seen is a carbon part just snap clean off. I have personally broken 2 alloy frames that just snapped clean (one at a weld, one in the middle of a tube, both on stays though...), and 1 carbon frame that slowly and obviously deformed and only eventually broke apart trying to limp it home. Modern carbon parts are waaaay less fragile than you think, just go find videos of Santa Cruz doing destructive testing from like _15 years ago_. Took them out of the machines and let some humans just gold swing frames into a concrete block. Carbon bounced off basically unscathed and handled further machine testing, alloy dented immediately and failed way lower than designed when back in the testing machine. Stop with the fragile carbon myth, it makes you look ignorant.