Descending in the wet

captainfirecat

Hi all

Had my first real scare today (well, several small ones followed by a larger one). It boils down to: it was tipping it down this morning and on downhills I tried to keep my speed 'low' (the fastest I got, unitnentioanally, was 30 on a good stretch of tarmac). My problem is I can't control my speed once it starts to climb!

If I'm sat upright I can't get much purchase on the levers, so at best I am shedding speed very slowly (given I am going downhill), and in a commuting situation that is less than good. When I finally caught on I needed to be on the drops so I could move the levers from the bottom (which gave me much more control) I locked the wheels trying to not run into a bus (to my credit I fishtailed but stayed on). A further issue is, what with all the potholes, I'm scared to be on the drops often as I feel out of control.

Is it a case of brake early and soft all the way down the hill when it is wet? Is it in fact safe to be on the drops over potholes and bumps and I'm just being a scaredy cat?

My mountain bike wants to stay still, so all my effort is to make it move. My road bike is the opposite, it wants to do 100mph and all my efforts are to stop it!

The important thing is I'm still smiling after nearly sliding into a bus

Daz555

I think you need to look at your brakes - you should be able to get enough power from the hoods for most situations. Are the brake pads good quality?

rolf_f

In the wet, you need to scrub the water off the rims before anything is likely to happen. If you have good pads (makes a big difference) you should still have decent braking. I suspect that you are panicking a bit when you first apply the brakes and by the time the water is cleared off the rims you are pulling too hard. It's really down to being more defensive, knowing your braking distances are longer or just getting a disc braked bike.

As for the drops - practice more. You are in more control in the drops than on the tops so just spend more time in them and it will seem natural enough.

captainfirecat

For the brake quality, probably not (the standard Carerra brakes), even in the dry I never feel entirely safe stopping. Some new ones seems a logical purchase, what is the best buy suggestion?

As to the drops, so no matter what the gradient I will always have better control on the drops? I will have to practise more then, I assumed using them over bumps and potholes was inadviseable.

I'll brake early and soft all the way home (well, not ALL the way home obviously ) as I'm in no hurry (and if I wear the brakes down through overuse, oh well I'm buying new ones anyway!).

I agree by the way, I panicked and hauled on the brakes, when a more gradual and calm pull would likely have stopped me in plenty of time as well. It's all experience!

junglist_matty

wet wheels and rim brakes = seriously reduced performance, so be careful!

Schoie81

CaptainFirecat wrote:

Hi all

Had my first real scare today

Me too!!! My first properly wet ride on the road bike - downhill with a corner at the bottom, got on the brakes too late and got to the corner too fast to do anything. Luckily there was no traffic at all and I could open the corner up by going over the other side of the road. Lived to tell the tale and lesson learned!

As for quality of brakes - is it the pads that are most important? (that would seem logical...) Can anyone recommend some decent ones? I suspect mine aren't the best quality either - standard issue with the bike....

Firecat - forecast is better for the rest of the day - so it should be dry ride home....

markhewitt1978

I was planning on going out for a spin this morning, heard the rain then reset the alarm.

Cubic

Schoie81 wrote:

As for quality of brakes - is it the pads that are most important? (that would seem logical...) Can anyone recommend some decent ones? I suspect mine aren't the best quality either - standard issue with the bike.....

I found that Koolstop Salmon pads are good in all conditions. I'm now using Swissstop Green pads, they're expensive compared to others, but they last a long time and they perform better than any other pad that I've tried.

sungod

^this, both are good pad options

there's some good advice above, a lot of it is down to practice/experience

learn to lightly skim the pads on the rims to clear water, then brakes will act much faster when needed, it helps to have correctly centered brakes and well adjusted pads

if it's steep, pulse the brakes to hold down speed rather than surging/braking

watch your weight distribution, move weight back so that you can balance front/rear brakes, most braking is from the front, but with weight moved back you can use the rear brake for a bit of extra traction and to stop the back stepping out with less chance of the rear wheel locking

maintain a longer gap in front of you than you would in the dry

are the levers adjusted so that you can brake effectively from the tops? if you're upright you'll get some air braking and have better visibility of hazards ahead, you can apply more braking power on the drops, but in traffic i stay upright as it also makes me a bit easier to see!

watch out for gravel/sand/oil and metal covers, especially on corners or braking areas, it's very easy to lose traction

some tyre compounds are better than others, conti's black chili is great in the wet

monkimark

Koolstop salmon pads are pretty good but wet weather makes road bike brakes even more rubbish than usual.

It's worth giving the rims a bit of a clean after a wet ride too - that gronky black water you get all over everything on wet days makes things a bit slippery.

captainfirecat

Thanks all.

I'll work on my technique, but in the meantime I will call into Halfords and get a new set of brake pads (I assume you all agree the ones that came with the bike won't be up to much and I'll be able to get some better ones without breaking the bank?), as I have their care plan so they will fit them for me (for the record I am capable of changing pads, but why pay a dog and bark myself ). Koolstop seem to be a well recomended brand so I'll aim for them.

And Schoie81, glad it wasn't just me And yes, weather is sunny, so hopefully we won't die on the way home!

rolf_f

monkimark wrote:

Koolstop salmon pads are pretty good but wet weather makes road bike brakes even more rubbish than usual.

If you think road bike brakes are rubbish in the dry then there is something wrong with your road bike brakes!

monkimark

If you think road bike brakes are good then you've obviously never used well set up hydraulic disc brakes or v-brakes

My road bike brakes are set up well and are pretty sharp in the dry but don't compare to the mountain bike (admittedly the grip available at the tyre is also a factor)

Schoie81

CaptainFirecat wrote:

And Schoie81, glad it wasn't just me And yes, weather is sunny, so hopefully we won't die on the way home!

First proper wet ride led to first puncture too (excluding the one that I caused myself). Just went to check tyre pressures on my lunch break and back one was flat! Had nothing to do this lunch time anyway!!

Monkimark - I agree - I could do with a seatbelt on my MTB with hydraulic discs - first time I breaked hard on that bike I shot off the front of the saddle - wasn't expecting that amount of breaking power - things had changed a bit in the 18years I didn't own a bike!

captainfirecat

I think part of the problem is I ride a motorbike, which stops quite briskly (disc brakes FTW! Plus fat tyres and engine braking), so my brain thinks I should be able to stop as quickly. I need to train it to be more gradual.

Hopefully new pads will help, we'll see!

unixnerd

I'm scared to be on the drops often as I feel out of control.

Me too, but that's the best way to brake on the downhills. Your centre of gravity is lower which not only reduces the chance of you going over the handlebars but it puts a small amount of extra weight over the rear wheel so it'll be harder to lock up. I find it feels less precarious on really steep hills now I'm used to it. I'm not a good descender as I've not had my fear gland surgically removed like some, but practice and knowing the bike's limits does help.

Schoie81

Rolf F wrote:

As for the drops - practice more. You are in more control in the drops than on the tops so just spend more time in them and it will seem natural enough.

Just out of curiosity - why do you say you are in more control on the drops? I've not had a road bike long and, for me, its taken a bit of getting used to the differences between road and MTBs, but I am getting more confident on the road bike now and I guess riding on the drops will be the next step for me. I very rarely use them, and i've only been using them to try them out, so only on the flat, going steady and with no traffic around. I want to get used to them and if I can tell my brain its better in some way down there, that might make me more focused on giving them a go more often!

the_cyclist_of_catan

Schoie81 wrote:

CaptainFirecat wrote:

Hi all

Had my first real scare today

Me too!!!

Me three.

Came off rather heavily yesterday, when I found myself going round a blind bend on a country lane only to be confronted by a honking big 4x4 coming in the opposite direction. No way was there room for both of us on the same bit of tarmac, I snatched at the brakes hard, lost the back end and smacked into the tarmac just in front of him. Not pleasant. Nothing broken (wrist is sore, but the only serious casualty is a nasty scuff on my nice, new brake lever), but part of me thinks that I'd have been even worse position if I hadn't hit the deck, as there was no way to stop in the rapidly diminishing gap between the two of us.

Also completely at a loss as to how to avoid the same thing happening in future -I'd already scrubbed off some speed approaching the bend, and was going at less than 15mph according to the GPS trace. FWIW, I consider myself a very timid cyclist - always riding the brakes down a descent, and braking into blind bends; plenty of other riders in the club go round that bend - and others - a lot quicker than I ever do. Perhaps they know something about braking that I don't.

Can't now remember if it was the driver or the cyclist-hating bystander who gleefully informed me that the national speed limit applied to that lane, and the car could have been going at 60mph quite legally instead of the much lower speed he was actually doing. I pointed out that "speed limit =/= safe speed, but you can't tell some people, and I was in no mood to argue. Bystander told me that cyclists are constantly going down "his" lane, 6-abreast, throwing their glass bottles behind them, and I should tell "my lot" not to do it. So consider yourselves told. No more 6-abreast on single track lanes, and no more glass bottles either, because next time he might drive at one of us at the full 60mph. I was just happy to get home sore but safe after that.

sungod

blind bend == go really really slow, especially if the road is too narrow for two buses to pass, even then assume someone has stopped on it, or is digging it up with no signage, or is crossing it without looking etc.

in modern vehicles drivers are extremely well protected and they know it, usually the most they'll get is a bit shaken up, perhaps even drop their phone, as they don't need to drive carefully to survive and spread their genes it can only get worse

impact triggered impaling spikes in the driver's seat would be one solution, but i don't think this safety feature will be adopted

andrewjoseph

Schoie81 wrote:

Rolf F wrote:

As for the drops - practice more. You are in more control in the drops than on the tops so just spend more time in them and it will seem natural enough.

Just out of curiosity - why do you say you are in more control on the drops?

Because you usually pull on the lever nearer the end, instead of near the top or middle. This means you need less effort. Also, in this position you are using your index / middle fingers which have more power and also more dexterity.

I came from mtb's too but found using the drops quite a natural process, especially when I quickly realised I had more control.

I have my road bike set up so I'm as comfortable, if not more so, in the drops than the hoods, I probably spend 90% of my ride in the drops.

Any steep descent I'm in the drops, around town/busy places, I'm sat up with my head twitching like a meerkat!

rolf_f

monkimark wrote:

If you think road bike brakes are good then you've obviously never used well set up hydraulic disc brakes or v-brakes

Do you think?

I have used a well set up hydraulic brake system and I have compared the performance of them to my road bikes in a semi scientific manner - ie measuring braking distances from roughly similar speeds in the dray. I think they were doing about 25mph and the difference in stopping distance, on a reasonable descending gradient, was about 1m between the bike with hydraulic discs and the road bike. What stopped the road bike slowing faster was not the poor braking surface but that I nearly went over the bars. The limitation is therefore not the type of brakes but the lack of weight of the bike (and its rider).

Therefore I can happily conclude that if you think that road bike brakes are not effective in the dry, then you haven't set them up well.

andrewjoseph wrote:

Schoie81 wrote:

Rolf F wrote:

As for the drops - practice more. You are in more control in the drops than on the tops so just spend more time in them and it will seem natural enough.

Just out of curiosity - why do you say you are in more control on the drops?

Because you usually pull on the lever nearer the end, instead of near the top or middle. This means you need less effort. Also, in this position you are using your index / middle fingers which have more power and also more dexterity.

Yep - it's all about leverage. The further you are from the fulcrum of the lever, the easier it is move it - the counter is that you have to move the lever further to exert the pressure - but up to a point that is good as it gives you more control. In the case of your digits, you want effectively the longest reach you can manage for your fingers to comfortably exert pressure on the lever. On old road bikes, you can't effectively brake from the hoods at all because the pivot is positioned lower down - so your fingers have to reach over the pivot/fulcrum before they can exert pressure on the lever. But because they are only just past the pivot, that pressure is exerted too close to the pivot to be really effective.

As Archimedes never said "Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I can stop a road bike in a pretty short distance"!

cougie

Definitely more control when you're in the drops. Look at how the pros race on cobbles - they'll be on the drops. Much less likely to get your hands bounced off the bars and better leverage on the brakes.

Schoie81

Well I guess I better get practicing on the drops then. One problem I have is that I have Shimano 2300 gears with the thumb-shifters - which I can't reach from the drops (unless I rig up some sort of prosthetic thumb extensions?!?). Will have to find some routes which avoid the hills a bit more so I'm not needing to change gear so often....

rolf_f

Schoie81 wrote:

Well I guess I better get practicing on the drops then. One problem I have is that I have Shimano 2300 gears with the thumb-shifters - which I can't reach from the drops (unless I rig up some sort of prosthetic thumb extensions?!?). Will have to find some routes which avoid the hills a bit more so I'm not needing to change gear so often....

Shimano engineering at its best - combined brake/shifters where you can't operate the shifters from the optimum braking position and where you can't brake fully efffectively from the optimum shifting position......... And for how many years have they been making them like that?...... :roll:

Schoie81

Rolf F wrote:

Schoie81 wrote:

Well I guess I better get practicing on the drops then. One problem I have is that I have Shimano 2300 gears with the thumb-shifters - which I can't reach from the drops (unless I rig up some sort of prosthetic thumb extensions?!?). Will have to find some routes which avoid the hills a bit more so I'm not needing to change gear so often....

Shimano engineering at its best - combined brake/shifters where you can't operate the shifters from the optimum braking position and where you can't brake fully efffectively from the optimum shifting position......... And for how many years have they been making them like that?...... :roll:

Yeah, the only thing I wished I knew a little bit more about when buying my first road bike. Having never even been near a bike with dropped bars before, this problem didn't cross my mind until the first time I tried riding on the drops. Oh well, you live and learn....

Daz555

Rolf F wrote:

I have used a well set up hydraulic brake system and I have compared the performance of them to my road bikes in a semi scientific manner - ie measuring braking distances from roughly similar speeds in the dry. I think they were doing about 25mph and the difference in stopping distance, on a reasonable descending gradient, was about 1m between the bike with hydraulic discs and the road bike. What stopped the road bike slowing faster was not the poor braking surface but that I nearly went over the bars. The limitation is therefore not the type of brakes but the lack of weight of the bike (and its rider).

Therefore I can happily conclude that if you think that road bike brakes are not effective in the dry, then you haven't set them up well..

To be fair your test does not sound very scientific. Not sure of your exact speed, bikes would be different, and braking performance was limited by not wanting to go over the bars.

So not really a test of disc v rim brakes at all.

All we have here is anecdotal evidence. I can add my own. The braking performance on my road bike is excellent. The braking performance on my MTB is even better.

Of course power is not everything. I'm convinced that disc brakes are more powerful but to be honest as long as your brakes are enough to chuck you over the bars in most conditions then we have enough power. What matters is feel/modulation - it is here that discs are in a different league to rims imo. Assuming discs trickle down to my end of the market, my next road bike will certainly have disc brakes.

As for the OP and going downhill in the wet - squeeze the brakes, don't snatch is the best tip I'd say. Also if you feel you have overcooked it in a corner try not to grab a handful of brake on a wet road in order to get round. Often it makes more sense to just ride it out - lean in a bit more as there is probably a lot more grip than you are letting yourself believe there is. Braking mid corner in panic is a classic mistake made by motorcycists and catches out dozens of weekend warriors every week. All such braking does is make the bike sit up and run wide - every time. It's hard to detach the braking reflex from the brain however - it seems so natural to try and slow down when things look like they might be going pear shaped.

Daz555

Rolf F wrote:

Schoie81 wrote:

Well I guess I better get practicing on the drops then. One problem I have is that I have Shimano 2300 gears with the thumb-shifters - which I can't reach from the drops (unless I rig up some sort of prosthetic thumb extensions?!?). Will have to find some routes which avoid the hills a bit more so I'm not needing to change gear so often....

Shimano engineering at its best - combined brake/shifters where you can't operate the shifters from the optimum braking position and where you can't brake fully efffectively from the optimum shifting position......... And for how many years have they been making them like that?...... :roll:

I think I read that Sora have finally moved away from the thumb shifter in 2013. About time!

southdownswolf

Sora moved away with last years groupset (2013 model) and the new Claris (2300) has moved away with this years new groupset (2014 model). Sora remains 9 speed and Claris (2300) remains 8 speed.

rolf_f

Daz555 wrote:

To be fair your test does not sound very scientific. Not sure of your exact speed, bikes would be different, and braking performance was limited by not wanting to go over the bars.

So not really a test of disc v rim brakes at all.

Not that scientific but not for the reasons you suggest. Ultimately, the sample set was too small and yes, the bikes too different to be a true test - but that in some respects doesn't matter. Speed differences were fairly small and I did brake as hard as I could. As for worry about going over the bars - if that did apply it would work against the rim brakes rather than the discs. I ran the test with my collection of bikes at the time (steel framed hardtail mtb, carbon road bike, steel framed tourer with cantis and old school racer with hard, 30 year old brake blocks) to get a balanced picture. Point is that the ability of the MTB to stop was as much down to it's weight allowing the brakes to be applied more firmly than the discs themselves. It had a small edge on the modern road bike and a much larger edge on the old road bike and tourer. Fitting discs to the road bike would probably not have slowed it much because, as I said, the rim brakes were enough to lift the back wheel. I ought to try the test again in the wet - the results would be pretty interesting and now I'd have GPS to help allay doubts about speed consistency but, tbh, when it rains I don't tend to think that now is a good time to take all my bikes out one after another and then have to clean them all!

TBH, I find modulation excellent with the Campag Centaur dual/single pivot combination - no matter what pads I use - I can't really see how discs would improve that. I would prefer discs in the wet but Leeds isn't London and I don't feel unsafe with the rim brakes in the wet and discs aren't worth the hassle for me for road use so I'll stick to them for MTB use only.

Daz555

Rolf F wrote:

TBH, I find modulation excellent with the Campag Centaur dual/single pivot combination - no matter what pads I use - I can't really see how discs would improve that.

Modulation is no doubt excellent on your Campags. To be honest the feel is pretty good on my Tiagras as well. There is no doubting however that discs (good ones) have better modulation - ya cannae change tha laws of physics captain!

rolf_f

Daz555 wrote:

Rolf F wrote:

TBH, I find modulation excellent with the Campag Centaur dual/single pivot combination - no matter what pads I use - I can't really see how discs would improve that.

Modulation is no doubt excellent on your Campags. To be honest the feel is pretty good on my Tiagras as well. There is no doubting however that discs (good ones) have better modulation - ya cannae change tha laws of physics captain!

True enough - but I tend to work on the theory that if I don't miss something, I probably don't need it! I suspect a lot depends on how light a touch you have as well. Probably you can get away with less finesse to modulate discs well.