Scrub Components is working on a top secret project called Alchemy, and it’s an all-new, lightweight mechanical disc brake caliper.
Mechanical caliper? Yep, it’s somewhat of a forgotten category with hydraulic stoppers getting so small and light – lighter in many instances than cable actuated versions. So, the question is why?
Scrub’s owner Chris LaCasce thinks there’s a market for a high end offering, and we’d agree. With more cyclocross bikes coming disc equipped and road bikes with rotors on the horizon, there’s likely going to be a big market for people upgrading just the frames and moving their existing group and parts over, or those that start out small (like with the Crux we just reviewed) and then upgrade parts as their budget allows. With the UCI’s change of heart, it gave Scrub enough of a market to jump in.
“Our goals were to create a design that allows both pads to move, similar to a hydraulic, and we just wanted to do something that looked different and was lighter than what you can currently get. And we wanted to do it with Scrub style!”
Chris says they’ve been working on these for about nine months, and the goal is to have a cyclocross specific model available in time for this year’s race season. August is the target, but it’s not firm.
“One of the design challenges was the two sided movement,” he said. “There’s a reason why nobody does it. We’ve gone through four or five complete design changes, but I think we’ve come up with a pretty slick way to do it. And it still meets our criteria of being sleek and lightweight.”
The initial product will be ‘cross specific because it’s a cautious way to bring it out. It could be that the same model eventually gets approved for road after they’ve done more testing on it…or there’ll be a completely new model. Same for a mountain bike version.
“Things are definitely coming together. We’ll be able to follow up this post in a relatively timely manner with more details.”
