Originally Posted by lawkd
I can't see what the shape of the dropout has to do with how the axle is supported. That makes no sense to me.
ok lets think about this: if a crank arm was supported on only 1/10th of its internal surface area, would you expect that crank arm to fail or not? the stress is concentrated rather than spread out. its simple. a vertical dropout wraps around 50 percent of the axel, spreading force around.