Chris King’s Cielo bicycle line has updated their 29er mountain bike from head to toe.
The headtube is shortened slightly to accommodate external headsets for tapered steerer tubes. This lets the bike run modern forks without jacking up the front end a half inch or so. In the back, they’re using new sliding dropouts that allow for a much cleaner frame and better adjustability. Moving up, they now offer S-bend seatstays in addition to the standard straight stays the bike originally came with. Since each bike is hand made, you can order it however you want it…but the old Paragon-style sliding dropouts will stop being offered by the end of this year.
This is one of the first iterations of the new rear triangle and dropout. Right now, King’s ordering the dropouts from a third party, but in the future it’s likely they’ll machine them in house and chisel them out a bit to save weight and give it a more chi-chi look.
Speaking of machining in house, they machine their own fork crowns for the steel forks that come with the road and cyclocross frames. Sure, the forks look retro, but their marketing guy and frame builder both say they are designed specifically for the bikes and really provide an overall excellent ride. Steel is real, as they say.
The dropouts on the left are the different ones used between the regular Sportif (sliding) and faster Sportif SE and Sportif Racer.
When we’ve seen the SE in the past, it’s been largely painted, hiding the beauty of their stainless steel’s brushed finish. The result of the finish is that it looks almost like titanium, then they leave the logos and detailing polished:
