a road bike you can run mountain bike tyres on……errr

3T Exploro LTD – aero gravel bike that can run mountain bike tires

So is it a road bike or a mountain bike now the niches have merged ?

Gnarcross/mac

It’s for people who want to try their luck at extreme tyre-doping for cyclocross races.

Open UP[/url] does much the same thing. It makes perfectly good sense – a nice, big air-volume has a lot to recommend it.

🙂

Both designed by the same bloke!

In addition Stuart from Bearbones has fitted 650b x 2.0″ tyres into his Arkose.

I used 2.1s in my London road and my pickenflick .
It’s only now that frames are becoming available to build the bikes I’ve wanted to ride for years.

It’s for people who ride on roads that have been fixed up so badly that the off-road way is smoother than the road…

It’s only now that frames are becoming available to build the bikes I’ve wanted to ride for years

This times lots ^^
Tough commuter/tourers for the hard months,yes please.
Big tyre clearance,yes please.
Disc brakes,yes please
More choice of tyres that work on mixed surfaces,yes please.

It’s for people who ride on roads that have been fixed up so badly that the off-road way is smoother than the road only way to ride them in comfort is to use a mountain or cross bike..

😉
As people have said many times before,Gravel mixed surface riding has been around for ages,but with all the choice now it has got a whole lot more fun.

Finally!

I’ve been turning 29ers into dropbar road/gravel bikes for quite a few years now (I’m on to my 4th). If you are not a racer and don’t like your bike imposing limitations on where you can ride, fat road tyres make a huge difference.

I think the 650B route for the dirt tyres is a blind alley though.

Just go the whole hog to almost road geometry geometry and 29er clearances and you can fit fat road tyres as well as proper mtb tyres (eg Big Apple 2.35″ for the road).

Most people would be surprised by how competent slick 2.35″ road tyres are on most natural trail conditions. The secret is tyre pressure.

I can see my perfect bike is just around the corner now. 🙂

Running 2′ Marathon Supremes on my Disc Trucker.
No overlap with full SKS guards.
Very happy with it.

Rides well offroad with 2′ MTB tyres too.

26′ wheels make sense in this application too, no overlap at all.

I think some of the images of the UP/3T with 2.25 MTB tyres are simply showing what the bike could take tyre-wise, rather than being some sort of ideal set-up. I ride bikes like this a lot and there’s (imo etc) a point where the tyre is far more capable than the bike geometry and ride position – ie by the time you can use average 2.25 MTB tyres I’d say the bike was wrong for the terrain; under-biking is fun but big MTB tyres kill the mile-eating ability of a drop-bar bike with big clearances.
Plus, drop bar set ups that work well for road miles are not as good as MTB bars or controls for fast off-road control, it’s just a road<>off-road compromise point like the tyre treads are. I’ve ridden this sort of bike with Nanos and X-kings, pretty good for off-road silliness but the WTB Horizon is better as a do-all when it’s dry and a rigid 29er is better for covering ‘proper’ off-road ground.

fatcross
cross+

Mines called the nostalgia bike. When I was around 14 years old, I had a old gold Peugeot road bike which I rode everywhere. On and off road, jumps off of kerbs etc.

The fat-road does all this but with a 40 year old man on top. Frickin fantastic fun.

Or this

Agree with Jameso above. These are interesting experiments, but they are all playing with a compromise point that can’t be overcome completely, but is throwing up some interesting bikes. At some point they’ll have to tweak and re-brand the hybrid…maybe a cannondale slate with bendy bars rather than drops?

EDIT – i’ve made my own too, based on a 29er scandal. A good bike is a versatile one i reckon…

But it’s a good compromise.
Adding clearance just makes a bike more versatile.
And for a do it all bike, versatility means it actually gets used more.

But it’s a good compromise.
Adding clearance just makes a bike more versatile.
And for a do it all bike, versatility means it actually gets used more.

It is not a bad thing but I think it is a little OTT having a do-it-all bike that is superlightweightexpensive. For it to truly versatile it needs an aero position, I like this one

Trust me to go against the grain, for the rest of the so-called-summer, I’m running road tyres on a fatbike… Extreme left-field is me! 😆

versatility means it actually gets used more.

A good bike is a versatile one i reckon…

‘In one’

A bit of compromise is inevitable so why not embrace it. Less ‘what bike for ..’ and more ‘what can I do on my bike?’

Jameso, what bike is that and are they the 650b horizon? If so what do you think of them? I’m looking for something similar for my next bike

It’s a cyclocross bike with loads of clearance.

It’s only now that frames are becoming available to build the bikes I’ve wanted to ride for years

Well to some degree they were always there in the form of tourers, roughstuff and expedition bikes, but I agree with your point about becoming more mainstream and accessible, and more performance oriented.

The proliferation of disc brakes has just made things soooo much easier as you have a lot more leeway in wheelsize, tyre clearance etc.

The versatility aspect is key, if you really could/do only have one bike, and you use it for everything, including transport then it will end up turning into a monster of compromises, but it’ll do everything acceptably, you might not choose to ride it over a pure MTB/road/cross/cargo if you had the option, but it will work for any of them to an acceptable degree, and these are the best bikes! bikes that you can literally do anything on, they’re just not exciting or cool.

I designed and built (with help) something similar about 20y ago, it was based around 559mm (26″ MTB) wheels and has S&S couplers for travelling. Doesn’t get a whole lot of use these days but I’ve still got it, works fine with fat and thin tyres but the small wheels are a bit harsh on bumpy roads.

Jameso, what bike is that and are they the 650b horizon? If so what do you think of them?

They are Horizons, great tyres. A little heavier duty at the tread than a Compass or Panaracer casing but excellent when set up tubeless and used under 30psi. The Panaracers I had were very supple but flatted all the time, the belted versions were a lot better. The Horizon’s got more volume though, the sidewalls are light enough and the tread is a good compound and thick enough to help resist debris. For a road tyre that can take on dry off-road conditions it’s as good as I could expect from a practically slick tyre.

Bike is a basic raw alu sample to experiment with this wheel format, had a few variations of it over last couple of years.

that 3T in the OP link looks great to me

… man, I’ve changed

“26′ wheels make sense in this application too, no overlap at all.“

I think I post this every time it comes up – my Spesh RockCombo is exactly this, but dates from 1989. Such a shame that the rest of the industry at the time thought hybrids should be road bikes with straight bars and it’s taken until now to catch up.

I normally run it with Schwalbe Marathons & full guards.

I put this together as a sort of proof of concept.

Loved riding it but sadly it is no more.

Did this to an old Muddy fox [/url]muddyfox_monstercross[/img]

Needs a longer stem and proper brifters before I would tour on it, anything remotely rocky and it’s quickly out of it’s depth

Anybody know when the WTB horizion will be available?

On and On,

I saw a Cannondale Back Backroads in Calgary which is essentially what you’ve made. So it seems the bike industry made the gravelbike/drop bar mtb years ago. Did they just fall by the wayside as road/mtb got obsessed with making xc/racers?

johnnystorm – Member
…Did they just fall by the wayside as road/mtb got obsessed with making xc/racers?

Racing nearly always stuffs up progress in cycling.

The do-it-all bike is simply rediscovering what our forebears knew – big wheels and big tyres makes for a great road and gravel bike that will do it all.

(Francis Birtles, Warren & Robert Lennie, at Eucla WA, 1907. Lennies attempting Perth-Sydney record)

faustus – Member
Agree with Jameso above. These are interesting experiments, but they are all playing with a compromise point that can’t be overcome completely, but is throwing up some interesting bikes…

EDIT – i’ve made my own too, based on a 29er scandal. A good bike is a versatile one i reckon…

It’s hard to beat the Scandal for this sort of conversion. The frame is as light as any alloy road frame, its geometry at 71º HA would suit any decent touring bike, but it’s got plenty tyre clearance for fat road tyres.

I was using a Scandal for this purpose but seeing as I had a TD-1 hanging around unused, I converted that instead, otherwise I would have stuck with the Scandal.

You going to stick up a pic?

Epicyclo – Agree about the Scandal, precisely why I choose it – and mine has a krampus fork with all the braze-ons so can take all manner of front wheels. Will put a pic up when it is in ‘final spec’ soon. Already feels like a bike that will get used for lots of things.

fatcross
cross+

It was Monstercross 5 or so years ago when I did it. A compromise has to be made if using same bike on and off road so just down to what side you want to lean on.
I was on the fast road bias for years by using a track bike with 25c tyres which was okay off road but I couldn’t do everything I wanted so avoided some parts of the route.
Before that used a cross bike and at times with 50c tyres which handled more of route but lost the nimbleness of th smaller tyres on road
A few years ago went back to an off road bias with an MTB with large tyres and have stuck with it so far.

Why have I stuck with it?, because it is more fun off road so leads me to ride more off road and is generally just more fun (manually, jumping over things, handling on fast loose corners etc,.)

I think I post this every time it comes up – my Spesh RockCombo is exactly this, but dates from 1989. Such a shame that the rest of the industry at the time thought hybrids should be road bikes with straight bars and it’s taken until now to catch up.

I wanted one of those at the time. We used to ride 7-20 miles of tarmac to get to good off-road spots then.

I think the industry has been making bikes a bit like this the whole time, before the RockCombo were the Cunningham bikes, before that was roughstuff tourers and French 650B bikes, since the late 80s there have been a few. But demand has never been that high and brands make what sells.

1986 –

For so many people wanting a ‘hybrid’ a flat-bar lightweight bike works well (a swept bar maybe better but shop-floor appeal drives a lot of spec) and it’s a bit odd to ride drops off-road outside of CX. I think this kind of bike can work better in many situations with a swept bar, unless it’s quite road-biased rather than a 50-50 spec.

mon homage to Birtle, Warren and Lennie!

It’d be nice to get bigger volume mtb tyres or slicks in there – clean Thunder Burts fit fine, dirty Thunder Burts scuff the paint) But further to comments above re: compromises: I’m well into inconvenient toe overlap already. Not an issue on the road, but more so on techy off road stuff.

Could you sneak some Schwalbe big ones on that ? Apparently sooooo good but I’ve not use them yet.

Onandon – don’t think so – “Measured width on a 17C rim at an air pressure of 35 psi is 57 mm.”

Thunder Burts are 52mm and take paint off the lugs on the fork crown. There’s a bit more space in the back. The 650b version might work nicely, and would solve the toe overlap issue. But I’m not going out for a new wheelset to get round a 5mm tyre clearance issue!

It’s a pain when clearance is that tight. I put 650s in my scalpel which were paper close. Ok to ride but a small buckle of a few mm would easily cut though the carbon. Not worth the risk.

A pic of mine. Just coz I like it 🙂

The Vagabond is working for me. Very well, so far. Although more 29er ATB/MTB with drops as opposed to road bike with fatter tyres.