HTupolev

Depends entirely on the gravel. It's hard to answer this in any meaningful way without riding in your area and knowing what sorts of the available gravel you're intending to ride on.

Some well-groomed compacted hardpack roads are genuinely smoother than most paved roads. Like:



There are some potholes here, but otherwise, this would be pretty fine even on 20mm tires at ludicrously high pressure.

On the other hand, here's a forest road made from large aggregate, which has not yet been well-compacted by logging trucks:



Even on my 2.1" tires it was pretty rough going.

PeteHski

I think you have a pretty good list there. Canyon and Giant are always good quality and value for money. I would likely go with one of those with a 105 group set. Maybe go for the one with the most tyre clearance. The Giant Contend AR has clearance for 38 mm. Sounds ideal to me. The 32 mm tyres it ships with might even be enough for all your needs.

I think I would want enough clearance for at least 35 mm tyres for maximum versatility.

mruneedahelmet

I've been romancing getting a gravel bike too; everything between buying something in a showroom and throwing the parts bin at my derelict mountain bike. Of course putting the fattest tires I can on an old roadie is also a consideration. For me the issue is more the function than the form.

My definition of gravel riding is frustratingly vague. It's a combination of trails I have hiked and thought "I could ride this without a proper mountain bike", and dirt roads I've never gone down. I really don't know what it entails or if I'll actually enjoy it until I try it. Which makes investing in it a real hurdle. As was mentioned earlier, it involves a lot of the inconveniences of mountain biking - something I gave up years ago.

I know I love the efficacy of road cycling, and the efficiency of a dedicated road bike. If I had to repurpose a bike for gravel riding, it wouldn't be my fast machine. I've trashed enough bike parts and suffered enough injuries on off road adventures to make that mistake. Much like mountain bikes, I think gravel bikes will age poorly and maybe in a few years we will see the secondary market flooded with these gravel bikes that are neither fast on the road nor competent on trails.

Islas

I have the same worry that's why I kinda lean towards the option with road bike with gravel tyres. Because in the end I'll have a "normal" road bike after all. At the same time as people have been mentioning here and even throwing some pictures with most of these bikes I think if you detach the wheels it's hard to know the difference if it was gravel or endurance road bike.

mruneedahelmet

If you are comfortable with endurance geometry on and off road, then it would be a sensible choice. I for one prefer more aggressive geometry and a shorter wheelbase on pavement. Simply swapping wheelsets on my road bike would not be sufficient to make it comfortable for riding on trails. This touches on the point of having a bike that is mediocre at two things, vs. a bike which is built for two distinct purposes.

There is also the consideration of wear and tear on components. I would not want to muck up my Ultegra drivetrain or crack my carbon handlebars while riding trails.

Islas

Yea with the aero frame of Propel Advanced and rather low avg speeds I feel like those guys, every school had at least one, that had the best, most expensive football gear (shoes, outfit...) but just couldnt play football at all I feel I'm sacrificing comfort (it's definetely race'y geometry) for ... well nothing, looks maybe. Or at least I hope that going down from it to endurance road bike I won't be doing minus 2km/h on average But people here say that's not the case.

My original post on this forum was about going endurance frame to help back pain, majority of responses back then was that it's not worth it (one of the reasons I didnt go for it), my lower back is a bit better now, but at the back of my head I still hope endurance frame + wider tyres will help me ride for longer

PeteHski

For sure it will! They don't make endurance bikes for nothing. Even pro level road race bikes are starting to get a bit taller, longer, slacker, with more tyre clearance and generally more comfortable.

Islas

Quick question: if I choose a disc brake bike and want to have a second set of wheels, I can just buy any wheels and attach a disc to them or how do I come about that?

prj71

You have to buy a wheelset that accepts a rotor on the hub. Either 6 bolt or center lock.

Islas

Thanks, any recommendation for a more road-like wheelset that accepts discs and is under 500 euro?

WhyFi

Fulcrum are a pretty safe bet. They have a number of options, so look through them for the combination of price/weight/depth/width that you're comfortable with.

Mosman12

Road bike with road tires , gravel bike with gravel tires !

Islas

Maybe a stupid question, but if I buy a second set of wheels, attach the disc to them, will they always fit into the brake caliper? I mean it's pretty narrow

primov8 

I got my Alex RXD6 wheelset from Merlin Cycles. A great road, but also a gravel capable wheelset that is also tubeless ready.

Merline does have several db wheelsets in your price point. You might even be able to buy new rotors as well and still stay within 500 euros.

WhyFi

Rotors should roughly align but, as you note, the tolerances are pretty slim, so there's a chance of some brake pad rubbing on one set or the other. If that's the case, you can fiddle with it a little bit each time you change wheels or you can go for a permanent fix.

Fiddly: take the wheels out, grab a slim lever/blade to slip between the pads and slowly/gently push the pads/pistons back in to the calipers. Put the other wheels on, pump the brake levers until the pads are back in position. If you're not going to swap wheels very often, this isn't too much of a pain in the butt.

Permanent: align the caliper to the rotor that's the further out of the two and then shim the other rotor outwards to match. You'll need the proper shims for the rotor, either 6-bolt or CenterLock, or some people will make their own shims cut from aluminum beer/soda cans. If you're going swap wheels frequently, I'd opt for this method.

Islas

Status update in case you wonder:

I've bought Scott Speedster 10 Disc 2020 (slightly used, but looks brand new). The clearance is quite wide, it sits on Schwalbe One 30 (original ones) now, I think it should easily fit 32/33 maybe bigger. I paid 1200 euro.
Firstly it's absolutely beautiful. I had 2 rides already, first a short one and second a bit longer
Ironically on both rides I clocked my personal best since 1y/1.5y in terms of avg speed, probably the confirmation bias got into my head too much
Impressions? I got no lower back pain on neither of the rides not even discomfort, but got terrible wrist pain instead and weirdly going from 25 to 30 tyre doesn't appear much more comfortable, maybe 7 bars is too much for the tyre, I'll try 5-6 next time.

It has the same groupset as my Propel but feels like it's working much worse, maybe it's because it hasn't been ridden much? Don't know. Cables in the frame are rattling like crazy, in Propel the cables didn't do that. There's a trick I heard to address that with zips.

Overall I'm happy with the purchase, still need to test it on gravel once I have 2nd set of wheels.

Thanks everyone for comments!

PeteHski

Yeah, I would drop the tyre pressure. 30 mm tyres don't need 7 bar and not surprised they would be uncomfortable at that pressure. Dropping them to 5.5 bar will make a big difference to comfort.

WhyFi

Yeah, 7 bar is way too high, unless you're pretty heavy. I'm about 82kg and run my 28mm tires at about 4bar (but I'm on some wide rims [23mm internal width]). Check with the Zipp tire pressure calculator for a good starting point on the pressure that you should be running - https://axs.sram.com/guides/tire/pressure

scottfsmith

Congrats on your new bike!

To figure out the max size gravel tire you can take, insert long Alan wrenches into the tightest spot with the 30mm tires mounted to see what the clearance is now. The biggest wrench that fits in the tightest spot on the frame is your clearance. It will probably be something like 8mm. For gravel riding I would suggest a minimum of 4mm clearance but everyone has their own view on that.. 2-6mm is where nearly all opinions lie and 4mm is a nice median. So, supposing you in fact have 8mm clearance on your 30's, you can take +4mm on each side which is 30+4+4 = 38mm. To be safe I would knock it down to 700x35c, tires don't exactly measure out to their number on the side. Also if your gravel rims are wider internally (some gravel rims are like that), the same tire will sit wider on those rims. On my gravel rims they are 4mm wider internally than my road rims and they add a couple mm to the tire width.

Oh, and for 35c gravel tires you really don't want them at 7 bar! You want more like 2.5bar there assuming average weight.

Kapusta

There is little point in going to larger tires if you don’t drop the pressure as well.

The tire volume itself is almost irrelevant to comfort and traction. it is the lower pressures that they allow you to run that gives you the benefits.

I am 175 lbs, and ran just roughly 4 bar front / 4.5 bar rear when I had 32mm tires. Lower than that I ran into rim strikes and pinch flats on potholes and uneven pavement.

I would suggest a starting pressure, but without knowing your weight it would be a useless guess.

Fox Farm

Perhaps but I have to say that my Ritchey gravel bike, as wonderful as it is, even with some road tires on it (I typically run 700 x 38 Schwable G-One), is not the same as my Orbea Orca road bike (carbon wheels tubular tires 700 x 25) when it comes to being fast and doing all of the things that a good road bike does. I one time took the Orca on some gravel specific trails and it was like wearing high heals rather than hiking boots, so to speak.

tomato coupe

No one is claiming than every road bike will work as a gravel bike, or that every gravel bike will excel as a road bike. The statement I was disagreeing with was:
Do your bikes suck at one or both things?