# Gravel & Endurance Bikes Merging and/or Comment Elements ?



## JoeOxfordCT (Jun 6, 2009)

Currently running a 2014 Synapse Hi-Mod Ultegra w/Soul S2.0 23mm wide clinchers & Michelin Pro 4 Service Course 25mm tires. I am 51 and do a combination of solo & group rides with some centuries thrown in. I have recently become interested in some of the gravel events that have sprung up with D2R2 ride being close by and a possible goal. 
I started poking around looking at gravel bikes and while there are some dedicated gravel bikes being produced, (Salsa Warbird, etc.) I see that lots of folks are doing these events on cross bikes. So I started looking at cross bikes like the Specialized Crux which comes with a "full" 50/34 compact crank and then it occured to me that many of the features of newer cross bikes are now being seen in many endurance road bikes... things like disc brakes, clearance for larger tires, even thru-axle, etc. Specialized is releasing a 30mm version of their Roubaix Pro tire next year. I had been thinking that my next "one bike to rule them all" bike might be a cross bike but by the time I'm ready (in a couple years) it may be hard to distinguish between many cross bike & endurance road bikes.... a good thing I would think yes ? What are folks out there thinking ?


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## BBoneCloneMN (Oct 21, 2012)

I think you're exactly right.


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## CliffordK (Jun 6, 2014)

Haven't several of the bike manufactures been playing around with seat stay and chain stay designs to absorb more shock. Certainly something one might consider if one is doing a lot of rough road riding. Fork design? 

I'm always a little careful with my bike. It seems like almost every BMX or MTB I see has a bent axle. But, I don't think I've ever bent an axle on my road bike, even though it would seem that there isn't much to the axles. I think they must use better steel with the axles. So, I wouldn't be jumping on the through axle bandwagon just yet. Are the rims still the weak part?

It is a tough middle ground. The road bikes are getting extremely lightweight. The full suspension MTBs are quite heavy (although like the road bikes, one can get them made with light materials, but not down to 15 lbs). So, where is the middle ground?

I have, of course, ridden my Colnago roadie on cobbles... And had a blast!!! :yesnod:


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## bruin11 (May 21, 2004)

Come on Joe, why would you want one bike to rule them all. The ideal is x=n+1.


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## fishman473 (Aug 2, 2004)

I'm thinking of buying a new bike in this category to replace my current road bike and MONSTERCROSS bike: One bike to rule them all!

Can anyone think of some bikes in this category. Basically road bikes that happen to fit larger (~40c) tires?

At the moment I'm looking at the Litespeed T5g and GT Grade. Comparing to my current road bike (Scwhinn Peleton LTD), these both have a 10 cm higher stack height (hub to top of head tube), which makes me think it would be hard for me to get the bars back down where I want them. I really just want a road bike that happens to have the tire clearance for gravel or CX tires. I want it to ride like a stable, long distance road bike, not a twitchy CX bike.


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## bikerector (Oct 31, 2012)

Fishman, Norco's new Search might be what you're looking for. The carbon version is running thru-axles front and rear and the bike has disc brakes. It's supposed to be able to accommodate a 40mm tire.

Mini-site: 2015 Search

All-city space horse might do it for you too.


OP, the biggest difference between CX bikes and gravel oriented bikes is the higher head tube and longer chainstays on the gravel bikes. Quick handling isn't a priority on gravel roads and stability is thus the longer chainstays. The more upright position of the taller headtube helps keep the upper body relaxed to help absorb the pounding.

Also, you could separate up cross bikes into those intended for racing and those intended for utility/adventure/commuting use. An example of the latter would be a crosscheck or many of the steel CX bikes actually. The race oriented ones are pretty close to endurance road bikes but with more tire clearance and CX specific features like tubes that help carrying shapes that help reduce mud buildup.

I think endurance road bikes will still be a little shorter in the rear than CX bikes because CX bikes need a little extra room for CX tires but with disc brakes the need to keep tires skinnier for rim brakes is no longer the case. I assume that's the case though, so they work with standard rim road brakes. Also, endurance road bikes probably won't be as overbuilt as CX bikes since they won't have to deal with the harsh conditions CX bikes see.


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## CliffordK (Jun 6, 2014)

fishman473 said:


> Basically road bikes that happen to fit larger (~40c) tires?


Is that width or diameter?

Perhaps something like this?












I wonder if you could fit larger 700c or 29er tires onto an older bike built for 27" wheels.


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## fishman473 (Aug 2, 2004)

Search looks like exactly what I'm looking for, thanks.

You can fit up to a 700x32c tire in an old 27" frame. Makes for a great townie bike or cheap tourer. That is not at all what I'm looking for.


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## LateSleeper (Feb 17, 2014)

I agree the Norco Search looks like quite a nice "all road" bike. Wonder what the longevity of a carbon fiber frame is in this kind of use. Now if cost is no object, you might want to consider the Seven Evergreen.


Seven Cycles | Gravel Road


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## fishman473 (Aug 2, 2004)

LateSleeper said:


> Wonder what the longevity of a carbon fiber frame is in this kind of use.


An off hand comment by a riding buddy this weekend has me wondering the same thing. Dean and Lightspeed offer gravel-type all-road rigs, maybe I should be looking in that direction.

I suspect titanium will lack the zip of a carbon bike, and I suppose its a little heavier, but I am not sure I could trust a carbon bike to last a decade or more that I would want an investment like that to last.


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## bikerector (Oct 31, 2012)

fishman473 said:


> An off hand comment by a riding buddy this weekend has me wondering the same thing. Dean and Lightspeed offer gravel-type all-road rigs, maybe I should be looking in that direction.
> 
> I suspect titanium will lack the zip of a carbon bike, and I suppose its a little heavier, but I am not sure I could trust a carbon bike to last a decade or more that I would want an investment like that to last.


Based on some carbon frame test performed by Santa Cruz on their carbon frames, I trust carbon a lot more than I used to assuming it's designed to be durable and not flyweight or you simply pay the premium for both. I could easily trust carbon for a decade but I know a lot of people that are more skeptical. I'm a little more skeptical of the forks but I had a cheap carbon fork from a bikesdirect bike last several years before I broke 2 aluminum and a ti frame (folded it in a straight on crash with a downed rider) from them and then just threw it all away and swearing off BD altogether (just couldn't trust it anymore).

I also think it's cheaper to repair carbon than ti, but I'm not sure on the actual cost. I've heard it's really expensive to work with and if a whole tube needs replaced it's expensive. The carbon repair places seem to be reasonably priced, might be comparable to ti repair. Steel is probably still the easiest by far to repair.

The non-carbon searchs are steel. I think the headtube is a little shorter, I think there was mention in bikerumor or one of the online sites that mentioned this in the interbike articles of it.


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## GRAVELBIKE (Sep 16, 2011)

Something to consider is how a bike handles with larger/wider tires. Trail will change with tire size. I've ridden several bikes that could accommodate 40-45mm tires, and the handling was very different than when the bikes were fitted with 28-32mm tires.


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## fishman473 (Aug 2, 2004)

bikerector said:


> Based on some carbon frame test performed by Santa Cruz on their carbon frames, I trust carbon a lot more than I used to assuming it's designed to be durable and not flyweight or you simply pay the premium for both. I could easily trust carbon for a decade but I know a lot of people that are more skeptical.


I guess I was talking less about fatigue life and large impact survivability, which I suspect would be similar for a Ti or carbon bike, but more along the lines of rocks flying up and impacting the downtube (Santa Cruz has downtube armor to deal with this), or laying the bike down in a loose corner. How well will they withstand those more frequent, minor impacts? I knocked over my Schwinn Peleton onto my concrete step when it was 4 months old. Now there a ding in the middle of the top tube. I was told it wasn't a serious ding largely because where it occoured in a low-stress area and because it mostly effected the clearcoat, just grazing the carbon, but its just kinda ugly to look at. I'd hate to have a dozen of those.


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## fishman473 (Aug 2, 2004)

GRAVELBIKE said:


> Something to consider is how a bike handles with larger/wider tires. Trail will change with tire size. I've ridden several bikes that could accommodate 40-45mm tires, and the handling was very different than when the bikes were fitted with 28-32mm tires.


Can you explain how they handled differently with the different tire sizes?


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## GRAVELBIKE (Sep 16, 2011)

fishman473 said:


> Can you explain how they handled differently with the different tire sizes?


When fitted with taller/wider tires, the bikes' steering was very slow, and difficult to control at slow speeds. Some good info on trail, etc, can be found here: http://yojimg.net/bike/web_tools/trailcalc.php


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## duriel (Oct 10, 2013)

I would think that increasing the trail would make the bike handle slower and it would be more stable to going straight and generally easier to control. 
Now at low speed if your trying to turn, that may be difficult.


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## headloss (Mar 3, 2013)

GRAVELBIKE said:


> Something to consider is how a bike handles with larger/wider tires. Trail will change with tire size. I've ridden several bikes that could accommodate 40-45mm tires, and the handling was very different than when the bikes were fitted with 28-32mm tires.


Personally, if I was going to go between 40-45mm and 28mm on a bike with disc brakes, I'd use a 650b rim for the wider tire and a 700c for the narrow and try to maintain circumference.


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## GRAVELBIKE (Sep 16, 2011)

headloss said:


> Personally, if I was going to go between 40-45mm and 28mm on a bike with disc brakes, I'd use a 650b rim for the wider tire and a 700c for the narrow and try to maintain circumference.


That's what I did with my Salsa Vaya. It worked really well. Personally, I've found that if I need a 700x45 tire, I'm probably better off riding my 29er.


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## bikerector (Oct 31, 2012)

fishman473 said:


> I guess I was talking less about fatigue life and large impact survivability, which I suspect would be similar for a Ti or carbon bike, but more along the lines of rocks flying up and impacting the downtube (Santa Cruz has downtube armor to deal with this), or laying the bike down in a loose corner. How well will they withstand those more frequent, minor impacts? I knocked over my Schwinn Peleton onto my concrete step when it was 4 months old. Now there a ding in the middle of the top tube. I was told it wasn't a serious ding largely because where it occoured in a low-stress area and because it mostly effected the clearcoat, just grazing the carbon, but its just kinda ugly to look at. I'd hate to have a dozen of those.


I guess I've never heard of a rock coming up from a tire and cracking a frame. I've actually not even seen paint chips on my norco carbon hardtail and the tires I use throw a lot of stones.

I know a few manufacturers have added interesting things to the front of the downtube for protection. Norco's armorlite tech (I assume that's a more protective outer layer) has been pretty solid for and a friend that have carbon hardtails. If the search is build with similar durability in mind, and with the thru-axle front and rear I imagine it is, then I think it would last a long time. My friend's hard tail in 3 years old now I think and I don't remember there being any damage from stone and things.

The crashing thing always gets brought up but that's always hard to tell. Laying it down in a corner and the handle bars, pedals, wheels/qr's and saddle do a reasonable job protecting the frame. Not sure how the lack of a QR would affect the protective nature. I'm trashed a few pairs of skewers from eating it on gravel sections in cross races from the rolling stones but the frame usually goes unscathed. I think other frames are just as prone to breakage in crashes as a carbon frame, you're just out less money should it break.

I do know norco has a pretty good crash replacement policy. I made sure to check before getting the carbon mtb because I was really skeptical because in my first 2 years of off-road riding I was a crashing machine. Had all the fitness from road racing but not the skills for the technical descending. Started with an aluminum beastly of a bike and eventually the nicer carbon after seeing my friend's bike hold up pretty well over time and many trail rides.

I'll admit, I really wanted a nice steel hardtail but they are pretty hard to find in comparison to a carbon bike and I was given a reasonable deal since i was buying the bike in the off season.


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## bikerector (Oct 31, 2012)

I was at the local norco dealer last night meeting for a group ride and discussed the Norco Carbon Search. The owner's impression of the bike is that it should be built with mtb type durability in mind so it should last a long time. Given, he would love to sell me one so some bias is to be expected.


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