3T updates Exploro aero gravel frame with new aero fork and flat mount brakes

peted76 wrote:

@Joules - https://gravelmap.com/

I'm just waiting for it to become more populated.. 

Awesome. Will add some routes later this week.

peted76 wrote:

@Joules.. sounds great.. any chance you've any routes you could link to? 

Thinking of where to go later in the year for a weekend away riding.. 

I'm gradually building up a range routes, but no links I can send you yet. Maybe I should sort a blog or something .......

For starters though, look for Craik, Eskdalemuir, Moffet and Ettrick in the Borders.

Craik and Ettrick are on dead end roads, but both have forest roads and tracks that link each other and also to both Eskdalemuir and Moffet.

Same goes for whole of Kielder region, and there are quite a few blocks of forest between the two areas as well which offer linking opportunities.

tsarouxaz wrote:

Aero gravel?  what for? what is the purpose? flat mount? could it be something else?

I know it sounds odd, particularly given the size fo the tyres, but owning a set of said tyres, and really rather enjoying blatting along fire roads and rougher paved roads, I get this.

Get past the whole aero thing about the bike and instead view it as a really fast bike for rough surfaces and it makes a lot of sense.

Perhaps you should head up here to the Borders where there are miles of forest roads linking lots of excellent (often dead end) back roads and you too would begin to understand.

Still, the price of the 3T puts it way off my list of potential purchases.

As for flat mount not being needed and post mount working perfectly well - agree on latter, but not on former.

Post mount does work perfectly well, but it doesn't look right on a lot of road bikes.

Flat mount was needed if only for aethetic purposes. Post mount works on MTBs because the large fork legs mean the calipers either don't stick back that far from the back of the forks or it looks OK anyway because of everything else that's going on with the bike. On a road bike the fork legs are much skinnier and I've seen plenty of road bikes with post mount calipers sticking way back out from the fork - it just looks untidy and flat mount sorts this out.

tsarouxaz wrote:

Aero gravel?  what for? what is the purpose?

Why not ? More here https://www.3t.bike/en/3t-bikes/exploro-2.html

Quote:

Why is aerodynamics important on allroad (asphalt, gravel, fire roads, single track) rides?

• You may go slow off-road, but on the connecting asphalt sections you need road riding speed.
• If you’re slow because of gradients, aero doesn’t matter much. But if it's due to head- or crosswinds, you're slow relative to the ground but very fast relative to the air and that’s what determines the resistance you experience (that’s exactly why you’re slow).

We didn’t want the Exploro to be fast in theory, but in the real world. So we tested at a realistic 20mph (32kmh) instead of the standard 30mph (48kmh) and optimized the frame for water bottles (tough to do long, epic rides without). We even designed the Sqaero shape to work well when covered in mud! The result? A muddy Exploro with 40mm knobby gravel tires and 2 water bottles (red line in the graph) is faster than the equivalent clean round tube bike is with 28mm slick road tires and without bottles (grey line).

tsarouxaz wrote:

flat mount? could it be something else?

That's the way things are going. It's also discussed in the article

Quote:

On the subject of the disc brake mount change, 3T’s head designer Gerard Vroomen is clearly not impressed by what he sees as another new standard.

“Postmount brakes work perfectly well, so there was no reason for the industry to invent a second standard (the whole idea of a standard is that there’s only one). But it’s hard to avoid when Shimano decides to push this,”