gus6464

In the summers here they have a weekly XC racing series and they just added gravel as one of the categories. The other categories are just age brackets. The course is the same as the XC course so 40+mm tires are recommended. Looks like mtb and gravel folk can coexist after all. The trails here have seen a huge increase of people doing them on gravel bikes so makes sense.

FlashBazbo

I was there when mountain bikes began. In the beginning, mountain bikes tended to be road bikes with clearance for bigger tires and a flat bar. The small-diamond, 26" wheel MTB didn't come until several years into the phenomenon. In other words . . . don't tell anybody but, except for the handlebar, today's gravel bikes pretty much are the same as the original mountain bikes. Extremely versatile. Rugged. Reliable. Fun.

Secret Squirrel

I have the same perspective and have recently purchased a Gravel Bike to replace the one that was stolen from me in the 90's. It was not difficult to replicate the 90's bike, even with the updated version of my Girvin Flex stem.
I just need a way to find the same level of riding time.

TimothyH

I agree.

Apart from carbon frames, carbon wheels, carbon handlebars, carbon seatposts, hydraulic disk brakes, tubeless tires, thru axles, electronic shifting, internal cable routing, integration of shifters with brake levers and 1x, today's gravel bikes are exactly the same as bikes from the 90's


-Tim-

itsmcgee

Well said TimothyH

HTupolev

Not at all. The klunkerz of Repack were essentially beach cruisers, built from frames like 1940s Schwinn Excelsiors. The slack front ends and reclined postures were fairly reasonable for the fire road descents and whatnot that they put the bikes through. The first production mountain bikes continued in this mold for a while. Here's my 1984 Stumpjumper:



Slack head tube with a low-offset fork for massive trail, slack seat tube, and chainstays that Grant Petersen would approve of. Total beach cruiser. I've only been able to give it a road-esque fit by using a too-small frame with a weird stem and the saddle slammed forward on a zero-offset seatpost.

It was more toward the late 80s and into the 90s that mountain bikes got road-like. The NORBA-era mountain bikes tended to be much steeper, and had overall geometries that weren't too far off a road bike. The super-long stems and narrow flat bars even emulated the contact points of drop-bar road bikes. John Tomac wasn't being that weird by throwing drop bars on his.

Secret Squirrel

So true, "Material Science" has made great strides in the last few decades.

chas58

I guess I was there before that, because we started on these kluky Schwinn beach cruisers - they were the only thing that hat 2.125 x 26" tires. I don't ever remember them being "road bikes" with flat bars.
Buy the time we got to the early '90s MTB geometry certainly was closer to road bike geometry than it is today (steep head angles, high BB, longer wheelbases). You are right - they are similar in handling to today's gravel bikes - but naturally the components have all changed.

mstateglfr 

Too young to have been there in the beginning, but everything ive ever read, watched, or heard is the opposite of original MTBs being the same as current gravel bikes with flat bars.

Geometry is different(which makes it a totally different bike), gearing exists(vs the cruisers from then), and...well yeah its just too significant a list for me to type out. See the first 2 examples as all that should be needed to show there is a clear and significant difference.

FlashBazbo

Good grief! I didn't intend to start the sadly typical bike forum pi**ing match.

First, I was talking NOT about the Frankenbikes that truly started the mountain bike thing. Yes, those were junk bikes and usually modified beach cruiser frames. I was talking about the production mountain bikes that started in the 1980 to 1982 period (which weren't all that well suited for mountain biking, but were great for what we now call gravel biking). See also, Diamondback Ridge Runner.

Second, I was talking about similarity to the road bikes of 1980-1982, NOT to today's road geometry. The road bikes of the 70's and early 80's looked a lot more like today's gravel bikes than today's road bikes do. Vastly different than today's road bikes. Friendlier geometry, to start with. My comments were era specific -- which, to me, only made sense.

Sorry if I gave you the impression I was "pulling something" on everyone. Geez. I was making relative comparisons, not angle-by-angle, component-by-component comparisons. (That would have been stupid.)

Spoonrobot 

You make less sense now.

I wager it would be extremely difficult to find a road bike with 71/70 headtube angle and 65mm+ trail from the early 80s. Today's road bikes are visually different than classic and vintage road bikes but geometrically they are very similar. Not so with gravel bikes that often feature very high trail, and high short stack/reach.

I could see tire clearance, but otherwise, no not really. Today's gravel bikes look nothing (visually, geometrically, etc) like the road bikes of the 70s and 80s.

HTupolev

As I detailed in my post above, the early production mountain bikes (starting with the Stumpjumper and Ridge Runner in 1982) were still very close in frame design to the cruisers of Repack Road.

Go look at a photograph from the side of an '82 Ridge Runner. You'll find that it's similar to my '84 Stumpjumper, slack angles and super-long chainstays. It's very cruiser-like, nothing like the gravel bikes of today.

Not much has happened in road geometry since the early 80s. For instance, here's my 1983 Miyata 710:



415mm chainstays, 73-degree head angle, 58mm of trail. Those figures are all pretty normal on today's market. So is the 84-degree seat tube angle.
The contact points behave differently than modern stuff (i.e. the drops can be a better handrest position than the hoods), but overall, the natural fit and posture of the bike isn't weird today.

Metieval

so my gravel bike is a yesteryear mtb - 20 pounds

so what is in 20 lbs that makes it different? Ummm everything!!

Spoonrobot 

And the rim is the biggest disc on the bike and'll stop you faster than some silly little saw blade.

HarborBandS

NORBA. John Tomac. Panaracer Smoke and Dart tires. Memories.

I used to ride 18" frame rigid mountain bikes in this era, including a few races with my bike shop mates. Now I ride a 56-58 cm road bikes. For me, the 90's MTB's had very compact triangles compared to most of the modern "gravel bikes" I see around (short seat tubes, but longer top tubes). I worked for a Trek and GT shop at the time, so my experience is mostly with those brands.

HarborBandS

HarborBandS

Here it is. Kind of confusing, since they are grouping a bunch of same-geometry models together and then breaking down by size.

My 18" 8700 appears to have lot's of reach with effective top tube of 59.2 cm on my old 18" frame! Stem wasn't exactly short either, but did have some rise (until I turned mine upside down).

LOOOOnnngggg wheelbase of 105.9 cm. Lots of trail. Head tube angle 71 degrees, seat tube angle 73 degrees.

26" gravel bike?

Chi_Z

not having to worry about getting ran over by aggressive drivers is a plus for gravel

shoota 

Having to worry about getting bit by a dog every five miles sure is a detractor

Marcus_Ti

Most of those farm dogs are just bored and want a good game of chase.

True story...a group of us were out riding by Merrit Reservoir, Which within a 50 mile radius has fewer people than some small apartment complexes. We saw some cattle grazing by the side of the road and called "Moo" at them....they ran away.

shoota 

"Most" being the key word. We've had several riders get bitten around here. And then to compound the problem the dog owners get pissed at us for being out there. The latest interaction with some hillbilly that lives on our favorite climb is that he told us to "go ride your f****ing bikes somewhere else!!", while his huge pit bull is trying to get through the rider's bike-shield. Yeah, I've never had to deal with that on the road. Grr.. /endrant

Chi_Z

sounds liker a plus, great for 1 minute interval training

chas58

You talking about 27" wheeled bikes? I think that was probably true.
by the time mountain bikes were around with relevancy ('90s), the road bikes I have were very steep and tight, while mountain bike had a geometry similar to what gravel bike had today.

gus6464

Goes to show how a thread to talk about XC racing with gravel bikes turned into a dumb pissing contest about geometry and comfort for some ridiculous reason.

HTupolev

The fairly modern-geo 1983 bike that I posted above has 27" wheels. They're only 8mm larger than 700c, so they don't have very significant implications on what you can and can't do with bike geometry.
Also, higher-end racing bikes were always effectively designed for 700c because they used tubulars; road tubulars have been "700c"-sized since the dawn of time. (700c clincher road bikes also existed during the 27" era, it just wasn't a US thing.)