So I sold my gravel bike (Cannondale Topstone 4) the end of last year as it wasn’t getting used (20 miles in 2 years)……

Now I find myself in the position that being able to commute a bit more is possible.

Rode my HT on the road yesterday and whilst it was comfortable (2.6″ rubber!) it wasn’t very fast (30t chain ring….).

I don’t want to wreck my HT and change the gearing so I’m looking to build up a gravel bike – yeah I know, should have kept the other one……

So what cheap’ish gravel frame that will take an internal dropper and 650B wheels?

Drive train I’ll just stick the Advent X 1×10 on as that a decent price and seemed to work well on the Cannondale.

Sonder Camino?

Love my camino. But I’ve never needed a dropper on the commute haa.

Was thinking Camino, but at £500 it isn’t cheap…..

This is part of my route:

Plus I just like having the dropper for convenience.

Carbonda CFR 696?

https://www.carbonda.com/road/gravel/80.html

You are building the gravel bike as a commute bike? Or will you do other stuff on it too?

If the former, why the dropper?

FWIW I’ve got a dropper on my gravel bike – a very gravelly gravel bike that rarely touches tarmac. I could take it or leave it to be honest. I’m not sure I’d miss it too much if I got rid. It’s one of the hoard to Ragley Trigs, which would have been my suggestion for you apart from the obvious.

There’s literally no new frames out there that are cheaper than the Camino apart from some with bad geometry on Merlin.

Source: I am currently looking for basically the same thing.

Oh and this came up on Facebook marketplace very near me and I thought would make an awesome commute bike.

No dropper mind

https://www.facebook.com/marketplace/item/6985078688267177/

And I’d ditch the layback seatpost because they are just wrong.

Vitus substance if you can find one

My Planet X tempest got fox gravel forks last year, and I subsequently felt it needed a dropper. No internal option meant an external pnw dropper. Tbh it looks fairly tidy, so id not let a non internal frame put you off of keen to fit a dropper post

Thanks all.

Camino seems the way to go, although even with my own wheels & other bits I can’t build it much cheaper than the cost of the Apex Mechanical build on the website, so might just get a complete bike!