A look at the gravel bike Chipps uses for his, er, style of gravel riding when he’s not mountain biking.
- Price: £2,499.99 frameset, approx £5,500 as built
- From: Freewheel
This isn’t my first Genesis, having previously owned the singlespeed Day One cyclocross bike, a carbon Vapour ‘cross racer as well as the titanium version of the Croix de Fer a couple of years ago. As the whole Genesis range saw a pretty major overhaul and redesign in 2024, bringing lots of new touches to the bikes, I decided to trade in the Ti and go for 931.
While the Croix de Fer 931 actually looks like a titanium frame, it’s made of Reynolds 931 stainless steel tubing. It’s a fiendishly tough material to work with, but the end result is a virtually corrosion-proof bike with the ride of steel. Compared to the (now redesigned) titanium frame I’d had, there were many improvements, like sensibly ported internal cable routing and a move to a T47 BB standard to keep compatibility high. The new Amplitude G200 carbon fork also offers internal routing for brake hose (and dynamo) as well as a slew of accessory bosses.
After consulting the size chart, and the Genesis staff, I ordered the frameset (frame, fork, stem and seatpost) in a size ‘S’ – which seemed counterintuitive as I’m normally as medium as you get. But it seems that bike companies have all started trying to include extra small and extra tall frames in their ranges, so what was medium is now small. As someone who rides a 54cm road bike and a M/L cusp mountain bike, I actually found the small Croix de Fer to fit perfectly, so prepare to do a lot of measuring or trying out if you’re not 100% sure of your needed size. To compliment the frame, I fitted the new Di2 2×12 GRX semi-wireless groupset, as well as the DT Swiss DiCut 1400 wheels. Bars and saddle were from Pro and tyres were initially Vittoria Terrano Muds.
Those bosses were probably the first thing I noticed. There just are SOO many of them, made more noticeable as they come fitted with a full set of dome-headed bolts. I’d rather they came with some blind caps, as it’s unlikely that anyone’s ever going to need all of them. However, it does show the versatility of the frame’s intentions. The next thing I noticed was that I didn’t have a BB tool to fit the T47 bottom bracket, but a quick trade with a pal and I was in business.
The bike build went very smoothly and the internal cable ports unbolt to allow easy access to the cable you’re trying to feed through. Unfortunately for me, the seatpost mounted Di2 battery precluded fitting a dropper post (though that’s not going to be the case with the latest generation fully wireless Di2) but I think that the 2×12 groupset regular user will fall into the ‘fast and aero’ gravel camp, rather than the ‘winch and plummet’ chunky trail, dropper post crew that most of my gravel riding lives in.
While this is a bike check and not a review, after six months of hard use, I’ve been impressed at how versatile the Croix de Fer 931 has been. The initial build is still the one I’m running, apart from changing the tyres from Terrano Muds to Vittoria Terrano Drys, which better suit the dry conditions and on/off road riding that I normally do. I’ve done 100km fast road rides on it when my road bike’s been out of action, I’ve taken it mountain biking as a ‘self-limiter’ with novice riders so that I didn’t get too carried away in my trail choice and it’s been great. I’ve even loaded it up with a full frame bag (and then bolted bottle cages to the forks, which worked well) and gone on overnight jaunts that traversed mountain passes. It’s been mighty capable so far.
Any plans on changing things up? Well, as I said in my DT Swiss wheels review, I have found that the deep section wheels, while being noticeably fast on long drags, are just too rigid for the kind of long, chunky descents I like, so I might look to fit some more supple hoops. I could always take advantage of the 47mm tyre capacity of the frame and fork, but I’m too much of an ‘anything bigger than 40mm and you’re mountain biking, not gravel riding’ stickler, so I’ll see if I can fit some shallower rims and see what the differences might be. One thing that potential purchasers should note is that the frame doesn’t have a UDH compatible derailleur, which will limit you in future gear choices to Shimano, rather than SRAM’s latest wireless Force, Rival and RED which need a UDH frame.
So, in all, the CdeF 931 is a bike that looks like Ti, but with the ride of steel, a massively versatile build-up range and a chirpy ride that encourages some big days out. And talking of which, I’m just about to load it up again and take the long way up to a mountaintop beer festival…
Battery in steerer a possibility to allow a dropper?
Very nice. I always replace ugly, unused dome headed mount bolts with loctite’d grub screws, looks much better.
Nice. I like these bike check reports
Screwfix do some nice stainless bolts with very slim heads that are unobtrusive but smart.. I would put a picture up if that function was working!
It’s a lovely looking bike.
I remember hearing about 931 years back when it first came out, people were getting quite excited about it but then it just seemed to vanish (Pipedream did a one-off 931 Sirius I think & Cotic may have looked at but stuck with titanium).
In my purely amateurish way I came to the conclusion that 931 was almost as good as titanium at almost the same price (it’s highly corrosion resistant for example, but not corrosion proof in the same was as titanium). It seemed to come with some of titanium’s disadvantages too – pricey, extremely difficult to work etc. I might be misremembering but I seem to recall that 931 loses the easy weldability/reparability of conventional steels (often cited as a key consideration for the use of steel bikes for expeditions).
I also appreciate that titanium can have issues with contaminated welds & cracking, but it seems by far a more known quantity than 931.
When you get into over two and a half grand for a frame range, a couple of hundred quid either way seems fairly irrelevant. As someone who’s genuinely interested (and never going to be able to afford either) what are the reasons, beyond being able to say “I’ve a 931 bike in my collection", for choosing 931 over titanium (the Croix de Fer can be had in both with just £200 difference)?
Love a stainless steel raw bike. But crying out for wireless AXS to remove those internal wires. Mine is red eTap titanium without the huge number of mounts, but a quick rack is all I need.
931red could be the new username 🤣
Loving the comments…
931 is a pretty hard material to work with. Someone on my framebuilding course was planning on TIG welding a 931 road frame, but after a few attempts, he ended up silver brazing it as it was just too unforgiving for him. You definitely won’t be able to get a tractor repair guy in Uzbekistan to weld up a crack like you might a more conventional steel.
The £200 price gap to the CdeF Ti is tough to justify not just saying ‘Buy the Ti’. Having ridden both (though not side by side) I would have to side on the Ti camp, as @pjay puts it, it’s a known quantity and I know many long term happy Ti bike owners.
@TiRed – Wireless AXS would be great on this (assuming you can (and I think you can) get full blanking plates for the braze-on cable ports. Although, as I mentioned, the latest three SRAM AXS groups wouldn’t work with this as they’re all UDH-only, so you’d be (luxuriously) stuck with previous AXS groupsets.
@chipps I’ve sometimes wondered, do you still have your posh pub bike? I really liked that too.Â
I most definitely still have it, @tthew