Quote:
Originally Posted by PanelDeland
The other advantage to disc is that they don't fade as badly in stop and go traffic.The surfaces are more open to air and cool quicker.
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This, I think is more of a factor of design of a specific system than an overall statement. There have been a lot of disk systems that have really horrible fading problems in both automotive and motorcycle applications. When drums get hot from over use they can become very sticky where they are pretty much like a switch, nothing or locked, where disks can become worthless and don't grab at all, or warp. Disks require far more fluid pressure to work effectively and far more surface tension and can heat up to the point that they will not work regardless of pressure applied.
There is also the factor of rotating mass. Increasing the braking surface area of a disk more or less creates a fairly linear increase in braking capability, whereas increasing the size of drums has diminishing returns because each increment of increase of surface area also substantially increases the rotating mass.