[Closed] Gravel bikebuild

Pretty standard Chinese open-mould frame - consider your crank / BB options as it takes BB386. What size of cassette depends on your drivetrain choice / what will play with road shifters.

Someone will be along shortly to tell you that you will die due to sudden and catastrophic failure but the same frame for 2x the price with some branded stickers will be far better because someone looked inside the box in the warehouse (/cynic mode)

Cheers. The big issue for me building a bike these days is the proliferation of standard out there for BB’s, wheels etc.  Last time I built one square taper was the only option!

NS Rag+ on sale at CRC might be a safer bet

It seems there might be chain clearance issues on frames like this if you run a 30 tooth front ring so unless someone else has tried it I think I might be better off starting with a mountain bike frame and putting a rigid fork and dropped bars on it.

Trouble is once you’ve bought all the bits it works out quite a bit more expensive than getting a whole bike in the first place!

i need something with the spread of gears that a mountain bike has (certainly at the low end)  but with the lighter weight and dropped bars of a road bike.

The SRAM road stuff can accommodate something like 42t on the cassette, but shimano is limited to 34t and doesn't really have a proper 1x option.

In my experience I haven't needed the gearing to be quite as low on my gravel bike as I want on an MTB.

Thats interesting Steve.  I looked at some gearing calculators on line and comparing a couple of gravel bikes with my Whyte 901 they don't have anything like the same hill climbing gearing.  Whyte do the Glencoe with the same 11-42 cassette but it runs a 44 tooth front ring rather than the 30 tooth I currently have.  Admittedly third gear is enough for most of the roads I'd encounter on the way to work but I don't think the Glencoe could even match that.