Groadie as main bike

I got you, so the front end will sit a few cm higher due to its ability to extra tire. I know I set up the stack on my gravel bikes the same as my road bikes, but i cant make the fork shorter.

This goes to my earlier point that a gravel bike geometry is very close to the geometry of an endurance road bike. Many people are ok with that, which is great, but many aren’t, which is great.

I am thinking about selling my roadie this spring. I really love riding that bike, such a great bike that I got for a good price. But I don’t need to do road racing, I am a MTB racer, and the cheap open mold frame gravel bike I have should do everything I want. Since I am trying to downgrade to the vanlife, three bikes is already a lot (enduro bike, XC bike, gravel).

I would probably run road tires most time. I rarely ride enough dirt on the gravel bike that requires gravel tires. I did the San Diego Belgian Waffle Ride on Gatorskins.

This causes me physical pain…those tires are horrendous for Crr. And as an added bonus, they ride like crap. :tired_face:

I used them for a ton of training miles back in my tri days, but no way I would ever ride them in an actual event.

2 Likes

It’s at the end of this Nerd Alert podcast - the “What bike should I buy” segment.

3 Likes

But they are reliable. At over 10,000 miles a year, I like reliable tires.

Currently on Michelin Power Protection which are even worse, but also MORE reliable.

Oh, no doubt…like I said, I used for a bunch for my tri training. Since most of my training for that was solo on my tri bike, and I was training by hours / watts and didn’t care about speed, they were a great choice (if not the most comfortable). Plus, when I then got on race rubber, I mentally felt “fast” since my same watts was resulting in faster speeds.

But I would never use them for a event…giving away minutes across something like BWR.

1 Like

had a Exploro Race Force AXS 2X on hold all week while I did some more research, and pulled the trigger today (last one in 58cm). SRAM AXS eTap 46-33 chainring and 10-36 cassette, some lower gears than what I have now. Picked up the Quarq power spider too. Now I need to think about some wider wheels because this one comes with Fulcrum 700s with 19mm internal width.

4 Likes

Enve seems to make good wheels

Love my Enve 5.6 discs. Not so sure about going hookless with wider Enve options

1 Like

Bought my CX in 2014, did some great tours with it, this picture taken in the lower Fatra in Slovakia.
Dont really see a reason to change the bike as long as it serves me so well and carries great memories for me

Nowadays I have two wheelsets, one with 38mm gravels, and one with 28mm slicks. Good compromise for me.

4 Likes

Great choice! For wheels, I recommend the DT Swiss GRC 1400: GRC 1400 SPLINE - Aero Gravel Wheels | DT Swiss.

When is the first ride? Getting the TyreWiz, too?

Tire wiz is nice

I use the Panaracer SS in 35mm for this purpose. They have been great.

2 Likes

I’ve got a V2 Santa Cruz Stigmata that is my go-to Groad bike. It will take up to 40mm tires on wide 23mm rims and the frame/fork are only like 1400 grams. These can be found for a pretty good price on Pinkbike used. I’ve since switched to 1X but have found that with a 42 tooth ring and I can usually keep up with folks on the road.

3 Likes

Look very nice but at that price I’d get Enve because of the positive experiences working with Enve. Pretty hard to find anything in stock… so I called my LBS and they had a set of Bontrager Aeolus Pro 3V TLR (25 internal, 32 external) and so I rode to the bike shop, paid for them, and continued on my 2+ hour workout. Figured I’d save some cash on these, and buy a nice set of off road wheels. New shop manager wanted me to buy a Trek but understood the decision (in fact a couple of months ago he was pissed off about his Madone top-tube isospeed issues and told me to buy Canyon!). Still not sure what I’m going to do with my Enve 5.6 Discs.

Still don’t have shipping info (from Boulder CO), and then when it arrives I’m going to put some 3M clear protective film on it, assemble it, go to my fitter, and then finally take it for a ride. In the meantime I’ll be rocking my gen1 Domane.

For me, my final two were the Stigmata and the 3TExploro. The Stig is a nice bike.

Yup, which is the main reason why I said I’m neutral on recommending them. I do think their are great in practice, though I would like the option of an alert if the pressure drops and not just edging below the bottom range. Knowing the pressure after the pump or separate gauge is removed is good, but it ain’t cheap. On the plus side, the batteries last forever.

1 Like

Do you ever have issues with rotor alignment when changing wheelsets? Or do you use the same wheel model on both sets - just different tires?

1 Like

See some further posts above a similar question: I have identical wheelsets and do only have to very minimally adjust the brakes. Works absolutely ok, takes just a minute max. No need to get a second bike at all.

1 Like