Back in mid-2023 I produced a run of FM160/30.5 to PM180/60 adapters. These turned out pretty awesome and are still the coolest thing to this day.
This was a bittersweet thing to do. I was impressed with how well they worked out but the fact that I had to was insane. Wildly, to this day, nobody that I know of has produced anything like it. Why is this? I know that I could be wrong about many things but the obvious implementation of the flat mount interface to almost all disc platforms seems utterly obvious. I’ve never looked back.
Following my last post covered the current state of disc brake mounting in bicycle land, I felt that the obvious next step was to revisit my adapter design. I’ve learned a lot in the past few years and this is required work. Look back at methods and models. Bring things in line with today and look for improvements.
A few things went on during this exercise:
- Fully integrated master part models into the adapter parts and assemblies of the brake system files. This means that if any detail of fitment changes, it changes everywhere from chassis to forks to adapters.
- Eliminated a few tiny errors in the parts. Nothing serious but now more exacting.
- A little lighter but scaled strength for larger rotors.
- Slight reshaping to improve thread locations within the system
- Added 140 mount versions
- Added several rotor diameters
- Cleaned up model appearance in each sub-assembly.
I had intended to clean up the SolidWorks file to be more durable and have a simpler feature tree. After a week of struggle, I ended up with a much better part…but far from the goal I set out for. The problem is that the geometry is quite odd and change dramatically from one configuration to another. Many features dependent on each other, not to my liking. This is made worse in that SolidWorks doesn’t have a chamfer feature that goes around corners similar to how a mill would produce, those features have to be added in the most difficult and delicate way possible. I’m really surprised that in 2026 this problem persists.
