New frame

[Scoox]

Prototype frame courtesy of Echo, to be released some time next year. Unfortunately I don't think I'm going to be able to test it till early January as I'm going home next Monday, if the frame arrives this Saturday I might just have enough time to build and test the bike.

[Ross McArthur]

Is the whole move away from horizontal dropouts about stiffness? Maybe a little about brake alignment too?

I see the 24s have went vertical. I'm guessing that's about getting a very short back end. 355mm!!

[Greetings]

The main benefit is a fixed geometry, no alignment issues and most importantly a rigid way of securing the wheel to the frame. With horizontal dropouts and especially snail cams, the wheel can move around on big moves. 

Never been a fan of snails but to be honest, I can't find one fault with the Echo grub screw system. It's a joy to set up. 

[Scoox]

This set-up has many advantages:

1. Chain is always tight, no need to manually adjust chain tension.
2. Wheel is always perfectly aligned (assuming the frame itself is perfectly symmetrical), so is the disc brake rotor relative to the caliper.
3. Distance from wheel axle to bottom bracket is constant regardless of chain stretch

In this frame it looks like the "dropout" is not really a dropout in the sense that it's just a hole, I still don't know how the wheel axle actually goes in and whether how easy it is to fit compared to other set-ups.

[Scoox]

10 minutes ago, Greetings said:

The main benefit is a fixed geometry, no alignment issues and most importantly a rigid way of securing the wheel to the frame. With horizontal dropouts and especially snail cams, the wheel can move around on big moves. 

Never been a fan of snails but to be honest, I can't find one fault with the Echo grub screw system. It's a joy to set up. 

The Echo grub screw system is almost perfect in my opinion. Although it has not been 100% issue free. For me the problem was that the grub screw would bite into the aluminium axle, and the chain would lose tension. I later bought a pair of Neon 'grub screw caps' and all my problems were gone. Dunno what this would be called but it's basically a CNCed crescent shaped bit of aluminium that sits between the grub screw and the axle, looks like this (I think the snail cam in this pic is just being used as a spacer):

I don't know whether the Mark VI also uses this thing, but it works really well.

[Ross McArthur]

I suppose when you are riding at such a high level things like that are obvious. A grub screw bedding into an alloy axle 0.5/1mm, I wouldn't notice!

[Scoox]

1 minute ago, Ross McArthur said:

I suppose when you are riding at such a high level things like that are obvious. A grub screw bedding into an alloy axle 0.5/1mm, I wouldn't notice!

It messes up the axle though

[Wavell]

1 hour ago, Scoox said:

This set-up has many advantages:

1. Chain is always tight, no need to manually adjust chain tension.
2. Wheel is always perfectly aligned (assuming the frame itself is perfectly symmetrical), so is the disc brake rotor relative to the caliper.
3. Distance from wheel axle to bottom bracket is constant regardless of chain stretch

In this frame it looks like the "dropout" is not really a dropout in the sense that it's just a hole, I still don't know how the wheel axle actually goes in and whether how easy it is to fit compared to other set-ups.

They could be following mtb style drop outs a lot are  this way now . On my Capra the axle just slides through the hub and screws in to the other end

[cwtrials]

If you get flats a lot having a fixed rear end is nice. Also the brake pads are always centered.  In a year of riding my crewkerz I haven't adjusted the brakes once and have never had to mess with alignment, even after getting a flat.

The echo grub screws worked pretty good, but it always seemed I'd have to re-adjust after a few minutes of riding.  Snail cams were a huge pain, I'd have to redo them after just about every move.  It seems with snail cams if you weighed less than 180 lbs they were fine, but anyone bigger just hated them.