Dual Road and Gravel bike

Quite possibly not. The reason is that the stays narrow as you get closer to the seat tube. At that point, all that may fit is 40mm and since you need 47 or 50mm to fill out the circumference, you may end up riding closer to the ground.

After months of research I picked up a 2020 Stigmata and it has been awesome!

Notable specs:

Ultegra Di2 w/ clutched RD
ENVE G23 rims
Easton EC90 SL crankset w/ 47/32 chainrings
Ultegra 11-34 cassette
Favero Assioma dual-sided pedals w/ SPD pedal bodies
Rene Herse Barlow Pass EL 700x38 tires set up tubeless

These pictures are from a recent trip down to the Scottsdale, AZ area when I did a ton of gravel and singletrack riding, most fun I’ve ever had on a bike:

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Love the color!

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Really interested in getting these tires for my Roubaix 2020, how are they holding up and do you have any images of the tire clearance?

I’m looking for the same…a dual bike for the fall through spring months when my Addict will be tucked away.

Majority of my riding will still be on roads with a speed focus but would like the option for light gravel.

So far I’m leaning towards the 3T Exploro frameset and GRX Di2 grouper. I will go with 700 wheels but still not sure what at this point.

There are so many options in this category it’s hard to choose.

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I ride a 2016 Specialized Diverge with 1x11 drivechain and 10-42 gearing with Flo 60 wheels and 28mm tires on the road. Just recently purchased the Flo gravel wheels and installed Riddler 37mm tires on them and another 10x42 cassette. Simple 2 minute change from road bike to gravel bike. She is plenty fast on the road; yet to try it on the gravel with the new setup.

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New Cervelo Caledonia looks nice for this.

It definitely does! And it may be the route I go. But having owned an R3 until very recently I’m interested in exploring other brands too.

One person’s opinion here, but here it is.

I’ve toyed with the idea of a one-bike-to-rule-them-all solution for a couple years, and I think, if that’s the route you want to go, you should get a full-on gravel bike. If you want to go on rides with any substantial amount of gravel-dirt roads, I personally would not enjoy that ride very likely if my tires were less than 38mm wide. I would pick the gravel bike that you think looks the coolest and lets you run 40-44ish mm wide 700 tires or 50+ 650 rims for your gravel rides. A second wheelset to run your faster or predominantly asphalt-centric rides on–e.g., a 45-60mm deep wheelset with 30-32mm actual width tires–covers the road rides. On gearing, I don’t think you can beat the 46/33 x 10-36 (cassette for gravel) and 10-28or33 (cassette for road rides). If you care about aero, grab an Exploro, but otherwise, the aero difference between a stock gravel bike and a non-aero full-on road bike when each has the same wheels will be pretty low.

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Thanks for that response…it is really good advice and I agree about the tires. I’m going to go with GRX Di2 and the gearing reco is helpful.

This will actually be my “other” bike. I have a 2020 Scott Addict RC Ultimate but I don’t want to run it in the crappier months of fall through spring.

So I want a bike that will be mostly for the road but also able to do a bit of light gravel/rougher roads.

Missed your mention of the Addict; absolutely get the full gravel clearance. :call_me_hand: 47/31 would be my leaning if this were primarily going to be on the road, and some 35-38mm slicks would be a lot of fun for your winter weather road bike. I used Schwalbe G-One Speed in 30mm that actually measured closer to 33mm in my road bike this past fall/winter, but I think I would have been happier on fatter slicks on my gravel bike.

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Based off of your replies about how much you enjoy the grail with a new set of wheels, I did the same. Like you said, it’s so much fun!! I didn’t realize how much a new set of wheels and tires would help above the stock Schwalbe Bites.

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Looks amazing. I’ve used mine this summer whilst my summer bike has been fixed (Shimano Crankset issues) and it is just brilliant. If I had a pound for every double take from fellow riders the wheels would have paid for themselves!!

That thing looks mean with those 58/62s!!

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My buddy has a Factor Vista - that thing is pretty amazing. It’s limited to around 35’s I believe, but from an eye test, it looks very aero - has everything hidden from the wind - including the brake lines (unlike my Treks which all route them to smack my knee every time I get out of the saddle). He uses is solely for gravel, but with some road slicks on there I have no doubt it would perform well on the road.

As for the Aspero, I finally got my hands on one to help a guy tweak his set up and I was beyond disappointed. The thing looked great, but weighed a ton and the fit and finish was very poor. I don’t know which one he had, it was mechanical and black with gold. Looked awesome, but left a lot to be desired upon closer inspection and has been nothing but problems for him. The fork literally splays out to the sides when you take out the thru axle so that it took two of us to get the front wheel back in - one to compress the fork together while the other tried to line up the axle. It could of course be a one off issue or even one he created somehow, but the weight of that bike was shocking compared to my Checkpoint.

Here are some pics of my multi purpose bike, racing CX, racing a crit, road ride, and in the bush

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I primarily need a very comfortable bike, on which I can spend hours and hours. I ride only road right now, but plan to get into light/medium gravel (in very flat Florida). This one bike will replace an '18 Cannondale Synapse and a '20 Specialized Epic Hardtail.

My plan is a 2021 Specialized Diverge Pro Carbon, which comes with a SRAM Force AXS 1x drivetrain (42, 10-50). I’d upgrade it to 2x, using 46/33 chainrings and a 10-33 cassette. Road wheelset would be 700x44 shod with René Herse Snoqualmie Pass slicks, and gravel wheelset would be 650x48 running René Herse Juniper Ridge knobbies.

  1. Have I missed any difficulty or problem?

  2. Which 650B wheels would go well with this bike? Am I correct in that I’d need probably a 23 or 25mm ID? What budget should I be looking at? Never bought a wheelset before.

  3. Would it be reasonable to try to run the 10-33 cassette for road and the 10-36 for gravel? Or would that cause some sort of a problem?

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As all my teammates have bought gravel bikes over the last few years, I’ve been racing/riding gravel on my XC full suspension MTB running 45’s and a few races on my Trek Madone rolling 28’s (hero or zero with flats). I kept telling them I’ll buy a gravel bike when someone comes out with an aero gravel bike with full suspension that weighs under 20 lbs. I basically wanted my Trek Madone with more compliance and ability to take 38+.

I finally gave in and bought a Trek Domane last week, which doesn’t exactly have suspension and isn’t super aero, but has a little of each. With the latest model, they added some of the Madone tube shapes and claim it’s a lot more aero than the previous version. It certainly looks more aero, but we’ll see. I’ll be swapping out the stock bar for an aero road bar and clip on aero bars. I’m a big fan of isospeed on my madone and only have it in back. My madone is really good in moderate gravel and broken pavement and I’ve got high hopes for the Domane running much larger tires and isospeed front and back. I went with the AXS force 2x road group, which should be good for most courses. On tougher courses, I’ve got the flexibility to throw on my Eagle AXS RD and 10-50 cassette from my MTB and just swap to a single chainring on the force crank.

I wasn’t trying to compromise on the gravel bike to use it on the road, I really just wanted a gravel bike that was as aero and compliant as possible. I will use if for some road riding, but that’s just a bonus.

I considered a Topstone with a lauf fork and also considered the new topstone with the low travel lefty fork for gravel. From an aero perspective, both of those would have sucked and the topstone has funky/unique crank spacing and and non-standard dish you have to do on the wheels.

I briefly thought the niner MCR was interesting with the rear suspension and low travel fox fork, but it’s not aero at all and it’s really heavy (significantly heavier than my MTB). At that point, I might have well just put drop bars on my MTB (which I considered).

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Before buying a dedicated 650B wheelset, see how you like gravel tires on the stock 700s that come with the bike.

Depending on the kind of riding you are doing (eg if often doing mixed surface rides) you may even be able to get by with a single set of tires - Eg something like the WTB byway 44s.

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