3T Exploro Primo Gravel Frameset

The World’s First Full-Aero Gravel Bike

The 3T Exploro Primo has changed gravel riding & racing forever, combining road speed and mountain toughness; already a winner of Unbound, Jeroboam, RAT1000, etc. It’s fast on any surface; paved, gravel and singletrack with clearance for up to 54mm tires for extreme gravel.

The Exploro Primo is designed to fit road, cross and even mountain bike tires following the GravelPlus standard. Road and cross tires fit at 700c up to 40mm, mountain bike tires with 650b up to 54mm, ensuring that all of these have virtually the same overall wheel diameter and therefore the same predictable handling.

You may go slow off-road, but if you have connecting asphalt sections you need road riding speed. If you’re slow because of gradients, aero doesn’t matter much. But if it’s due to head or crosswinds, you’re slow relative to the ground but very fast relative to the air and that’s what determines the resistance you experience. The Exploro is also a great road bike in its own right. When using it for fast paved rides, any aero benefit is appreciated.

Allroad Aerodynamics

The key to the Exploro’s speed is the aero downtube that is wide enough to catch the airflow coming off the big front tire (a skinny downtube wouldn’t even touch the airflow). But at 50mm wide, a full airfoil with a normal ratio would have to be 150-200mm deep, causing too much surface drag. So they square off the tail, keeping most of the aero performance with a 50x75mm cross section that is also close to perfect for strength and stiffness; the “Sqaero” shape, which also effectively shields the water bottles.

3T didn’t just want the Exploro Primo to be fast in theory, but also in the real world. So they tested at a realistic 20mph (32kmh) instead of the standard 30mph (48kmh) and optimized the frame for water bottles (tough to do long, epic rides without).

They even designed the Sqaero shape to work well when covered in mud! The result? A muddy Exploro with 40mm knobby gravel tires and 2 water bottles is faster than the equivalent clean round tube bike is with 28mm slick road tires and without bottles.

Features:

• • CLEAN PERFORMANCE: Internal cables, hoses and seatpost clamp clean up the frame aerodynamically and visually. Dedicated FlipTop cable guides are future-proof with in mechanical & electronic versions for single & double chainrings.
  • HANG LOOSE HANGER: Mounting a rear wheel with disc brake can be a pain, we make it easy. Forget the derailleur, focus on the disc, put the wheel in, slide thru the axle and hang the derailleur back with the wheel already securely in place.
  • SEATPOST EXPANDER: The original Exploro Primo has a beautiful hidden expander, but a top-mounted expander is a bit more user-friendly so just like on the Strada, this design is now available on the Exploro.

• Unidirectional pre-preg carbon, High-modulus/high-strength performance blend layup
• 3T Fango fork
• 3T Charlie Exploro Seatpost
• Sealed cartridge 1.125″ – 1.5″ headset
• Syntace X-12 thru-axle, 100×12 front – 142×12 rear (specific for hang loose hanger)
• Flat Mount Disc 140/160mm
• Internal Cable Routing via interchangeable FlipTop covers for 1×10/11, 2×10/11, Di2, eTap
• BB386EVO
• Max inner/Outer ring: 36T/50T
• Max single ring (offset ring): 46T
• Max single ring (flat ring): 50T
• Max SRAM AXS 2x combination: 46/33T