Gravel bike upgrades

I’ve got a steel gravel/all-road bike (Otso Warakin) that came with Apex and some HEAVY DT Swiss wheels. I’ve upgraded the wheels to November All-Roads w/ White Industries hubs—awesome wheels. And replaced the crank with a Quarq D-zero carbon.

So the derailleur (it’s a 1x) is Apex, the shifters are Apex, and the brakes are mechanical Avid BB7.

Wanted to get thoughts on the following:

  1. Any benefit besides weight upgrading to Rival and/or Force derailleur and shifters (staying mechanical)?
  2. I’ve been pretty happy with the Avid mechanical brakes. How big of an improvement would hydraulic be?
  3. It would be a big cost, but also considering the “mullet” option of Force AXS shifters with and Eagle derailleur? I’m not clear whether this would require the hydraulic brake upgrade or not.
  4. finally, could go with Force AXS and switch to a 2x (the Quarq crank works for both 1x and 2x)

Anyone with experience with any of these setups or thoughts on the different approaches (besides the obvious increasing costs moving from option 1 to option 4)? I haven’t really considered GRX because I really like the Quarq crank and PM and my understanding is the you have to use a GRX crank with GRX.

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Any benefit besides weight upgrading to Rival and/or Force derailleur and shifters (staying mechanical)?

-The Apex RD basically the same as the other two except for being steel, the pulleys have bushings instead of bearings, and the b-bolt (connects to the derailleur hanger) isn’t as nice. The pulleys are $20 on Amazon. The B-bolt will eventually develop side to side play. Otherwise they are identical as far as feel/features/function. The rival and the force are the same units, but one costs 2x more. I had Apex1 and Force1 RDs on my two bikes as the same time, couldn’t tell the difference. Better cables and housing DO make a huge difference though.

I’ve been pretty happy with the Avid mechanical brakes. How big of an improvement would hydraulic be?

-None. Tires stop the bike. Pads and rotors stop the tires. The caliper just applies the force. Better brakes respond more intuitively to force changes so you can keep the tire on the edge of traction. If you’re happy with your current brakes, thats as good as it gets.

It would be a big cost, but also considering the “mullet” option of Force AXS shifters with and Eagle derailleur? I’m not clear whether this would require the hydraulic brake upgrade or not.
finally, could go with Force AXS and switch to a 2x (the Quarq crank works for both 1x and 2x)

-You can go buck wild, but SRAM 1x cable shifting is pretty great. You’d need hydro brakes though.

For gravel, being able to bash the bike a bit is nice. A cheap Apex RD lets you replace things as you break them. I’d only go AXS 12sp as a toy, not a real performance upgrade.

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Put conti terra speed tires on there :ok_hand:

I had a bike with Apex on it once, biggest pile of garbage ever. Force would be a cheap and easy upgrade as you can keep your shifters. You can do GRX 1x without having to go with a GRX crank.

I would upgrade the brakes to dual action calipers at a minimum, hydro or mechanical. Hydro is nice but would be an expensive upgrade.

Hydraulic brakes. as a previous user of cable discs on gravel and CX bikes I can say that it makes a huge difference. You may have the same tyres and brakes but you can apply a greater, modulated force with one finger whilst applying a grip on the bars. It gives you more control, braking force and far, far less hand fatigue.

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I’m going through a similar exercise on a new gravel bike build, and am likely going to stick with TRP Spyre Mechanical disc brakes for a few reasons. I have Ultegra hydro on my road bike for comparison.

-Ease of maintenance/ repair. In my experience while I am more likely to need to do repairs to a cable actuated system road side, I’m a lot more confident in the ability to fix cable brakes road side. Also finding parts is easier right now (this will change as road hydros trickle farther down product lines). Also my bike has no internal routing so the replacement of cables is a 15 minute job.
-Travel. My gravel bike is usually the one I travel with. I don’t want to have to bleed brakes in a hotel room or deal with trying to find spares in a place I don’t know. It also makes my travel spares/ tool kit smaller.
-Modulation. While I definitely feel more power/ modulation with Hydro’s, I don’t really feel like I’m missing it on the gravel bike. Modulation helps me most when I’m really at speed on the road or trying to squeeze speed out of corners, and that’s just not how I ride my gravel bike. Even in a race scenario I never felt like I was limited by my braking and never found myself wishing for more power. I do use compressionless housing which helps. I also don’t really pack the bike down so weight isn’t a major factor.

If I were travelling less with this bike or planning to really pack it down for backpacking trips and got a good deal I might go hydro, but I’m very happy with mechanical.