Revelation Posted April 13, 2010 Report Share Posted April 13, 2010 (edited) So what is up with all the newer/modern stock frames (Koxx, Neon, Onza, Monty, etc) being made with horizontal dropouts? Yes, I know we dont run gears any more. However, from my experience, with vertical dropouts, I never ever have to mess with the chain, brake allignment and gearing issues. And with a good spring tensioner like I have right now, the chain is pretty much as tight as it gets. I also have to add that I never have to worry about chain stretch too. I know of other riders with horizontal dropout frames, I can always hear the chain slapping the frame. And when they take the wheel off, it takes so much effort to put it back on. I've been using vertical dropouts since I started riding, and couldn't have been any happier. Now, I'm considering a new frame with more modern geo and they are all horizontal dropouts! Where did all the vertical dropout frames go? Am I the only one realizing this? Of course, there might be a slight weight advantage with the snail cam set up, but I simply cannot stand them! I really like the new Slate2's geo.. Edited April 13, 2010 by Revelation Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tarquin Posted April 13, 2010 Report Share Posted April 13, 2010 Sounds about right. Horizontal dropouts are a waste of time. I haven't ridden for just over 3 years, and coming back into the scene, there's a hell of alot changed unfortunately. Ok, some stuff for the best, but its like having to learn again which sucks. +1 vote for more vertical dropouts Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
trialsmax04 Posted April 13, 2010 Report Share Posted April 13, 2010 i have to agree. On my old mod, the chain tension was all over the place. As soon as the chain stretched it was useless. On my hifi i havnt touched the rear wheel assembly in a good 3 months. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Matt Burrows Posted April 13, 2010 Report Share Posted April 13, 2010 Horizontal dropouts are the only way in my eyes! After switching to horizontal last year for the the first time, I wouldn't want to go back. I've had so much trouble in the past with snapped tensioners and mech hangers. Its great to be able to practice balance lines and hopping onto rails etc without any worry of bike damage. Not to mention it gets rid of any chain wrap issues, and now I have confidence to really crank the pedals on short run ups instead of holding back for fear of slipping. With vertical dropouts you can never quite cure these two problems. With modern 18:15 ratios you can pretty much ignore all fixed tensioners as they won't give enough chain wrap, which leaves you with sprung tensioners. OK so you can get some decent ones that give plenty of tension and are strong enough to take some knocks, but what about the mech hanger? The only tensioners that support the mech hanger are fixed ones, but they will only work with 16t rear cogs or bigger, so you can't use a FFW set-up. Now for a lot of riders there is nothing wrong with a 22t front chainring and a rear freehub. I ran that set-up for years and it never held me back in the slightest. But for top level UCI comps (which is what pushes component trends/development the most) a FFW set-up IS better, and so are horizontal dropouts. There are plenty of disadvantages to horizontal dropouts, which may well outweigh the minor advantages for the average street rider. Hopefully a lot of the disadvantages will be cured in the future. I know lots of people have trouble getting the right tension with snail cams. The Echo TR snail cams have this issue solved in my eye, I've had mine for 6 months and they are so easy to use. The main issue for me with my set-up is tight spots in the chain tension. Hopefully more manufacturers will move to a splined freewheel and cog fitting instead of threads which should help. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
psycholist Posted April 13, 2010 Report Share Posted April 13, 2010 I run one of the Echo sprung tensioners and vertical dropouts and the setup works well. The tensioner doesn't use the derailleur hanger at all and if you land on it it folds out of the way (And since it sits inside the loop of the chain you'll hit the chain before the tensioner hits). It'd be perfect if the chainstay length on my bike wasn't just too long to allow the chain to be run with no tensioner at all, leaving the chain just under an inch longer than it should be, making the chain skip when pedalling up long slopes though it never skips on pedal kicks. I shaved about half a mm off the front of the dropouts a month or so back and was able to shorten the chain properly and now its perfect. The thing that annoys me with horizontal dropouts is that you have to keep adjusting them to keep the chain tensioned and once you adjust the chain tension you then have to adjust the brakes as well. Disk braked bikes particularly will have a very limited range of adjustment (Unless you go to disk mounts that slide with the dropout - I'm pretty sure those on the market couldn't survive trials use - or slots for the disk caliper to mount into, which compromises strength) before the edge of the disk starts to miss the pads. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alex Dark Posted April 13, 2010 Report Share Posted April 13, 2010 Horizontal dropouts are the only way in my eyes! YES....i wouldn't go back from horizontal now, works ace, perfect tension all the time Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ben_travis Posted April 13, 2010 Report Share Posted April 13, 2010 selling my ozonys xr26 if you fancy a modern geo'd frame with vertical dropouts Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mark W Posted April 13, 2010 Report Share Posted April 13, 2010 The thing that annoys me with horizontal dropouts is that you have to keep adjusting them to keep the chain tensioned and once you adjust the chain tension you then have to adjust the brakes as well. What setup are you using, snail cams wise? And chain, too. Seems weird you've got to keep adjusting them all the time at any rate. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BigAl Posted April 13, 2010 Report Share Posted April 13, 2010 Horizontal=fail. Vertical=pure win. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sstein Posted April 13, 2010 Report Share Posted April 13, 2010 I had a slight problem when I first went to horizontal and now I absolutely love it. Once you chain has bedded in and you adjust it there are no problems at all if you set it up right and as for adjusting the brake all the time, if you set up the brake in the right way the first time it often needs little or no adjustment at all. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Will Arnold Posted April 13, 2010 Report Share Posted April 13, 2010 my vote goes to horizontal. so many pro's against sprung and fixed tensioners, especially when building a comp machine! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Revelation Posted April 13, 2010 Author Report Share Posted April 13, 2010 Horizontal dropouts are the only way in my eyes! After switching to horizontal last year for the the first time, I wouldn't want to go back. I've had so much trouble in the past with snapped tensioners and mech hangers. Its great to be able to practice balance lines and hopping onto rails etc without any worry of bike damage. Not to mention it gets rid of any chain wrap issues, and now I have confidence to really crank the pedals on short run ups instead of holding back for fear of slipping. With vertical dropouts you can never quite cure these two problems. With modern 18:15 ratios you can pretty much ignore all fixed tensioners as they won't give enough chain wrap, which leaves you with sprung tensioners. OK so you can get some decent ones that give plenty of tension and are strong enough to take some knocks, but what about the mech hanger? The only tensioners that support the mech hanger are fixed ones, but they will only work with 16t rear cogs or bigger, so you can't use a FFW set-up. Now for a lot of riders there is nothing wrong with a 22t front chainring and a rear freehub. I ran that set-up for years and it never held me back in the slightest. But for top level UCI comps (which is what pushes component trends/development the most) a FFW set-up IS better, and so are horizontal dropouts. I'm using these tensionners with the roller and pulling the chain up. running 18-15 and chain wrap is as good as/ or better than snail cam set up. and it convers the deraileur hanger as well. I never had any chain skipping problems. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pogo Posted April 13, 2010 Report Share Posted April 13, 2010 +1 Vertical dropouts Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tarquin Posted April 13, 2010 Report Share Posted April 13, 2010 Horizontal=fail. Vertical=pure win. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ogre Posted April 13, 2010 Report Share Posted April 13, 2010 the limey dropouts seem prety good, brake mounts need to evolve with the new dropouts, i dislike vertical even though i don't have to shuffle my hub around, i like the idea of neater tention and no mech to land on. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Clawz114 Posted April 13, 2010 Report Share Posted April 13, 2010 +1 for Vertical. As someone posted in the video a few posts up, push up chain tensioners actually give more chain wrap than a horizontal dropout setup. I prefer Vertical dropouts, but there definitely needs to be more vertical dropout tensioners available that dont rely on a mech hanger. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Matt Burrows Posted April 13, 2010 Report Share Posted April 13, 2010 I'm using these tensionners with the roller and pulling the chain up. running 18-15 and chain wrap is as good as/ or better than snail cam set up. and it convers the deraileur hanger as well. I never had any chain skipping problems. I'm glad somebody is using one of those, they do seem to address both issues I talked about. I considered getting one, but it was a bit of an unknown and very expensive at £60. And at the end of the day if you land on it regularly it's still going to break. Again this is only really a big issue if you crash a lot or like to do a lot of rail lines, so it really depends on your riding style Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Revelation Posted April 13, 2010 Author Report Share Posted April 13, 2010 selling my ozonys xr26 if you fancy a modern geo'd frame with vertical dropouts Thanks for letting me know! However, I'm looking for something from North America to save that shipping cost. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mark W Posted April 14, 2010 Report Share Posted April 14, 2010 Ozonys frames are still sort of vertical dropout? Not particularly cheap though... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Borat Posted April 14, 2010 Report Share Posted April 14, 2010 What about the onza or rockamanananan intergrated chain tensioners. I know people have have some problems with the rockman ones, but the ones on my ICE are f**king awsome! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Foamoi Refresher Posted April 14, 2010 Report Share Posted April 14, 2010 hoe about the good old leeson 360 dropouts, your wheel will always stay in the same place, pretty simple to take the wheel of and pout back on, nice little smart built in tensioner. no problems with chain wrap. previously to other leeson's i have owned i ahve always been a verticle dropout sorta guy, but we all know that vertical dropouts do have drawbacks and so do horizontal dropouts both equally. personally, i dont really get this FF system on stocks these days, i have been in and out of the trials scene for a couple of years now, and the only advantage i can really see is wieght ??? maybe a little more chain wrap than the 'old school' conventional system. im not a comp rider, and far from anything TGS, i'm not a purist in any way, i do it for the love, adrenaline, the expressionism. which is what street riding to me is all about. maybe if i was a good TGS rider then wieght may be an issue for me, but it all seems so minuscule, and really unindividual as part of the sport itself, and im not in anyway trying to have a go, because those are the people that are pushing the sport in terms if bigger, higher, longer etc really why do you ride?? thats a massive question in itself . . . but ive just never had any desire to be like that, so therefore ive never really seen the point in go horizontal just my 2cents . . Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mark W Posted April 14, 2010 Report Share Posted April 14, 2010 personally, i dont really get this FF system on stocks these days Cheaper, lighter, more engagement points (for the money), better clearance. 4 pretty good reasons I've got a FFW system on my 24 'cos riding someone else's Pro2T felt weird going from a 108 click freewheel, and it was just a lot less effort running FFW on it rather than having to run a Hope or a King which are still realistically the only 2 rear hub options people have. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aener Posted April 14, 2010 Report Share Posted April 14, 2010 Horizontals really aren't difficult once you've set them up a couple of times. The only drawback I can think of is when you have one of those frames where, when your chain stretches a bit you have to run a half link 'cause someone designed/fabricated it badly. There's quite a few problems with verticals, on the other hand. Seriously. All you have to do is work out a system for doing it. Get a Continental tire. After riding for a week, you'll know how to work 'em Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
uldis Posted April 15, 2010 Report Share Posted April 15, 2010 Horizontal=win Vertical=pure fail. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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