They are also not made to accept disc brakes.

One minor advantage of disc brakes is that the brake force is more consistent.

Rims always have minor variations and are never perfectly true. As a result rim brakes tend to grab a tiny bit in certain spots. As a result you can't get quite as much power before locking up.

Hydraulic discs also respond faster, meaning it's easier to recover from being over the limit.

Mechanical discs brakes aren't really any better than a modern dual pivot rim brake. Both are basically limited by the flex in the cables. The discs will be better in the rain.

The difference between brakes is basically only noticeable when you're riding near the limits.

They used to not. Last I knew at best they only inset the dropout on the NDS side and left the DS dropout alone on disc forks.

The problem with these things is that the comparisons are rarely apples to apples. High end disc brakes, either hydro or mech are worlds better than high end rim brakes, IME. There is a lot of overlap at the mid/low end for regular riding. Rain/dirt and discs are superior across the board.

One major thing is that disc brakes allow significantly better braking with wide tires. Compare even the lowliest mechanical disc brake to a long reach caliper and the former is significantly better in all conditions.

Disc brakes are also completely insulate the wheel-set from structural wear. I've seen the stock pads on rim brakes destroy a rim, ridden only in dry weather, in less than 5,000 miles. We're talking rim thickness that went from 1.7mm to 0.4mm in half a season - rim was toast and it was pretty expensive to replace.

The ejection issue seems to be limited to older models - current production is almost entirely thru-axle or forward facing drop outs. I've had the QR loosen but never had a wheel eject and it's pretty scary but just another thing to be checked during pre-ride. In my case the lawyer lips kept the wheel in place for almost 6 hours of riding with it loose enough to shift every time I braked, I just didn't notice.

Mine was on a poorly designed Soma fork that STILL has downward facing dropouts for some stupid reason.

Here's a great article and graphic:



https://cyclingtips.com/2015/10/road...axels-but-why/

Anyway, with the exception of my C&V fixed gear all my bikes are disc. I ride mountain bikes a lot, I ride in the rain and at night a lot and I like to switch between fat 650b and skinny 700c so discs work great for me.

IMO, there are actually TWO fairly big ifs in that statement.
The big thing is the self-unscrewing that happens.
Once the q/r begins to slip, even once, the acorn nut unscrews rather rapidly.
It doesn't take long before the q/r becomes slack enough to slide over even rather deep lawyer lips.
The chance the rider has to notice the wheel losing alignment during braking before ejection is rather small.

Sure, IF you ALWAYS use a rigid enough skewer, and ALWAYS close it hard enough, THEN the current design works.

But considering how easy it would have been to avoid, it's kinda embarrassing and annoying that the industry settled for such a poor design.
It's a critical assembly, and it's designed in a way that allows it to fail at an easily foreseeable operator/equipment error.

In fairness to the bicycle industry...QRs and skewers and dropouts existed long before bicycle disc brakes became normal, as well as before exposed-cam QRs existed. And back when Tullio Campagnolo came up with it braking really really sucked.

Your Cattrike, if it's like my friends has a through axle. He sometimes is on a different plant and has ridden with a loose QR and never had an ejection.

I think Soma is finally using forward facing dropouts on their newer disc framesets. The Saga DC, Wolverine, and, I think, Fogcutter all appear to have them, but judging from their website photos the older framesets have not been updated. I put a Salsa fork on my Double Cross Disc partly because I wanted the forward dropouts. Even so, the lawyer lips on the Salsa are so huge that you might as well have a through axle for the amount of unscrewing you have to do to get the wheel off.

One downside is that I find wheel mounting slightly more awkward with the forward dropouts. I think it's because the angle of the dropout kind of pushes the wheel forward as you're lowering the fork down onto it.

My argument isn't with QRs, it's mainly with the decision to put the caliper on the rear of the fork.

A front-mount caliper and the design becomes fail-safe. Even thru-axles would benefit. With both ride and brake forces acting in much closer alignment it'd be far easier to keep the front wheel accurately in place.

Unfortunately, that isn't true.

Although my disc brake wheel moves around in the fork, it hasn't come out. Yet. I bought some better, internal cam quick releases, like you recommended. Enve's newer version of their CX disc fork is thru-axle, but the one I got in 2014 is not. (It looks like Figure 4 in the above post.) It popped out of my roof rack once. The fork is sprung instead of having lawyer tabs, but that I found can cut both ways.

It would also move the caliper out of the way of front fender stays, which would make mounting front fenders much less awkward.