Site icon Riding Gravel

Project All Road: New Life For an Old Gravel Bike- Part 2

Grannygear

Project All Road: New Life For an Old Gravel Bike- Part 2 – by Grannygear

Editor’s Note: This concludes Grannygear’s look into the revival of an old gravel bike. See Part 1 here if you missed that.

Grannygear’s Salsa Cycles Warbird

Off the garage hook and onto the road: The build of Project All Road and new life for a Salsa Warbird

The Salsa Warbird frame of this era, done in aluminum, was billed as a gravel racing bike. The Warbird is still a current option from Salsa, but now is only sold in carbon. It was actually a very refined frame. Salsa put some time into the shaping and butting and what-not of the tubing. I remember it having a snappy response and a decently compliant back end but a stiff front end. The fork was pretty unyielding. “Gravel Tuned” must mean something different than I think it does.

It was only really good for up to a 40mm tire and while that is not bad, it is less than great for fitting a plump 42c WTB Resolute. But for All-Road use, that tire limitation is a moot point. I will run 30C road tires most all the time and if I want to go to something more burly, I have a few 35mm-ish, fast gravel tires around. My fav is the 36mm WTB Vulpine if I will see much dirt. And that stiffer front end of the Warbird is less of a liability on the road than off and might even be a plus (up to a point, anyway).

The rest of the bike’s geometry is very close to the Lynskey but is 5mm shorter on the chain stays with less bottom bracket drop at 70MM. That should give me a bit more forward eagerness when I stand and pedal with spirit, although it will be nuanced. Stack and reach are about the same. The seat tube angle is slacker by a degree. 

I remember when this Warbird was my only gravel bike. It was very nice to ride and I recall thinking that it would make a quite decent road bike as long as you were not trying to crush the CAT 1 crowd. So, in general terms, I expected it would fall into the realm of a modern endurance road bike with a bit longer back end (5 to 10mm).

I did think quite a bit regarding the gearing. I could go many ways with what I had in the house. If I ever upgrade this road group, I would look at the SRAM eTap AXS Rival/Force. But that is for another time. My immediate goal was to run lower gearing for any days where I would be living La Vida Loca with the gravel tires on it. 

Option 1: Maybe a 46/30 crank set.  But a 46T big ring would not be quite tall enough for the 90% road bias. Yes, I would not spin that out very often, but I would spend a lot of time way down the cassette on the smaller cogs and I am not a fan of that. Even though a 46/11 is the same gear inches as…say a 50/13 (just to pick a gear out of my hat), I feel that bigger chain rings and cogs are more efficient. If you have pedaled a 10T rear cog, you know what I mean. Pretty rumbly. And that 30T small ring is just too small for a road bike (for me). 
Option 2: I could have run a 48/32 crank setup from Praxis. That is not a bad idea. A 32 is still kind of a small ring for road use in my opinion but it’s better than a 30T. However I don’t know of anyone else that makes that 48/32 setup. I would be a bit locked in.
Option 3: A bigger cassette? The Force 22 rear derailleur will only handle so much cog size and chain slack. I could use an 11-36 cassette from SRAM. It shifts it, but it is not all that smooth. And I am not sure I really need that low a gear for this bike.
Option 4: A standard road compact crank of 50/34 paired with an 11-32 rear cassette for the Boyd carbons and the 30mm road tires. For the ‘Gravel Light’ wheels option, I could run the Easton EA90 SLs with something like a 35mm minimally treaded tire  I have a few of those in the box-o-tires. I could use a Shimano 11-34 cassette. That would give me a 1:1 which is pretty low for a road bike and would let me survive a moderate adventure ride in the dirt.

Option number 4 is what I decided to do. It’s as I said…a compromise. So for the build parts, here is we have from bottom to top:

That is about it. The cages are off the shelf stuff from Bontrager and since the Warbird has a third bottle mount on the downtube underside, I can carry quite a bit of water; four bottles easily (one in the bar bag). The Wahoo Element Bolt just works and works. Take THAT, Garmin!

Is it any good?
Now. How has it worked out? Well, I am very pleased. I have ridden it perhaps several times now as of this writing, likely a total of 300 miles and about 14,000+ feet of climbing. The first ride I set 6 PR’s, all uphill. The biggest day has been 75 miles and 7000’ of climbing. 

I can feel, or at least I think I can feel, the extra length in the chain stays when I get out of the saddle and get on it. Like the dog is wagging a longer tail. I am not sure that I am actually much slower. Likely not. And the Warbird has a very smart forward surge when you give it some gas. It scoots. I attribute that mostly to the quite nice Boyd carbon wheels, but the bottom end of the Warbird frame seems stout enough.

It does take more effort to get it to turn in at speed on a winding road, but you adjust to that soon enough. It is nicely composed at 40mph on bad roads. I’ll accept the compromise, but I do miss that more precise, quick to turn, handling of an agile road machine.

It does not ride quite as well as the Ritchey Road Logic Disc but I am not that surprised. On the flip side, it also feels more lively. Overall, the ride is quite acceptable and I would say comparable to a modern carbon road bike of its type.
It also looks really good too, at least I think so. Not stodgy or oddly tall like some endurance road bikes. I care about the ‘look’ of a bike. It’s the Italian in me. She is Bellissima! 

So is this the last road bike I will ever buy? I doubt it. I would like to try high end Ti some day, but it is just not a financial priority and I am not convinced it’s worth the cost. I would likely roll back to carbon, but I have only a few ideas of which one. The Giant Defy would be very high on my list.

What would I change? I would not mind if the chain stays were 10mm shorter and the BB drop was a few mms more. Do that and make it out of carbon and you get a Salsa Warroad. It would be interesting to compare. And I would very much like to try the electronic stuff from SRAM for the road. Perhaps next year. 

For now, it’s a fun bike and summer in So Cal means a lot of trips to road ride the coastal areas and escape the heat. And that means lots of saddle time on the new whip. I also have an 80 mile loop that would be perfect for the Warbird with the gravel wheels on it. But that might have to wait until cooler weather. Summer is here.

Maybe some day there will be road bike number 10. Maybe I will keep searching for ’THE ONE!’ bike. Maybe. Red pill or blue? Just don’t tell my wife I said that. She already thinks I’m crazy.

Exit mobile version