My vote’s for the Grade. Love mine. My ‘base’ commute is a 20km country lane round trip, but 4 days out of 5 I extend the out leg to 2+ hours – to avoid boredom I mix this up between off-road trails, minor cement roads, and lanes, with an adjustent of tyre pressure it’ll do all except full-on MTB (which I’ve done, as I don’t mind the odd bit of hike a bike). I’ve also done flat out Sunday chaingangs, but the heavy wheels and wide ratio spacing make this a chore. I live in a hilly area so plenty of opportunity to use the 36×32.
Mine is the 105 – I borrowed the Ultegra one for a couple of months from my LBS before buying the bike, but thought Ultegra was overkill for what I wanted, and the wheels would get upgraded anyway. The 105’s Formula hubs aren’t great, but easy to replace bearings, and the headset died within months. The original tyres are about done, so looking into replacing them with tubeless.
For ‘guards I use SKS Bluemels, 35mm, which could be wider to keep some water off my feet, and I’ve ordered some Crud Mk3s to see if they’re better. I want ‘guards to be reasonably easy to remove/refit. Wrap the seatstay with helitape before fitting the ‘brake’ bridge adaptor as mine wore the carbon down on the seatstays.
If Tredz are doing the 105 for 1500, I’d have one in a flash and use the change for some Hunt wheels.
