First results of Saturday's invasive 'what if?' thought.
What if gravel was born from MTB rather than road/CX?
Dragged my old 2012ish Spesh Epic out of retirement. Skinniest, lowest profile tyres I could find, pumped up hard. Brain rear shock set to not-quite-rigid. Forks pumped up a bit. Flipped the stem and added some inboard bar ends. 38t single ring (might go bigger yet and a round chainring - all I had kicking around - feels proper odd after years of ovals). Flat pedals.
Considering narrower, flat bars. Maybe a longer stem.
What's its niche? Ultra-XC? Adventure bike? Gravel with an off-road bent? Just a bike?
Planning to try it for occasional fair weather commuting - 25km each way mostly tarmac if going direct but could mix in a majority off-road route on the way home when I'm in less of a hurry.
Money and maintenance no object, that's the gravel bike I'd ride.
👍
Looks a lovey place to roll through the countryside.
You can really see in your photos that the biggest difference older MTBs have is the HT angle - it's really steep. Seat tube angle is different too. But let's be honest, leaving aside the marketing BS, we rode bikes like this non-stop at the time and were perfectly happy with them!
In the modern day, that's a "downcountry all mountain gravel rig" 👍
It’s a bike just ride it and have fun.
When you talk to roadies they mostly talk about gears mtbers mostly talk about frame angles.
the last magazine had a Pace bike test and that was an angle fest.
ride the bike have fun.
It's clearly a GCX - Gravel Country eXtreme.
How much does it weigh?
Iz disappoint, came here expecting a Red Dwarf reference
4th post - maybe too subtle?
Why do you need to pump the tyres up hard?
I think what you've built there is a shit FS MTB more than anything else
Whereas a gravel bike is the worst of both worlds.
In a previous life I'd have secretly been pleased that I'd niggled the purists! 😋
TBH I've just built something that I think does a job I want it to. Like the mismatched travel mullet not-quite-enduro bike I had Marino build for me, I don't always want stuff that other people do (my riding mates would - do - say that that's my entire cyclist personality).
Haven't ridden it in 'anger' yet so it might well turn out to be shite!