Salsa seems to have addressed my complaints about the Warbird feeling a little too sedate, but creating the Warroad to give a more lively feel (also with 650b tires). Its interesting to see them fine tune the gravel thing by making something a little less endurance oriented and possibly fun in the way a road bike can be fun.
Other than the price, I kinda like it. Slap some 700 x 32mm GP 5000s on there for road and some 27.5 x 2.1s (if that is indeed the clearance) Thunder Burts for gravel and you can get rid of another bike in the garage.
However, needing two wheelsets on an already overpriced bike is less than ideal.
Interesting beast. Super short rear end, 71 degree head angle, tall-ish front end. I could imagine it as a comfy road bike, or as Volsung said a dual purpose bike with two wheelsets. I'd still probably go for a Warbird, but it's interesting to see them fine tune their models like this.
“During development I saw Warroad as a road bike with a side of gravel. We succeeded in mixing the agility and responsiveness of a road bike with the confidence to turn down a sketchy road whenever the opportunity arises.” 650b tires, 415mm chain stays.
Where Warroad differs from Warbird is its focus on agility over stability. Warroad is for road with a side of gravel; Warbird is for gravel racing where its longer wheelbase and greater stability excel.
“ I wanted a bike that didn’t limit the ride to a surface, had quick handling and was responsive to rider feedback. The Warroad balances this with a stable road ride, hence the endurance geometry idea,” Said Meiser.
The gearing seems designed for the flatlands. I'd be more interested in some of the Salsa offerings if they would acknowledge that some of us need lower gears than 34/32.
Edited to add: yeah, I am kind of old...But around here, even youngsters like low gearing.
Koyote wrote:The gearing seems designed for the flatlands. I'd be more interested in some of the Salsa offerings if they would acknowledge that some of us need lower gears than 34/32.
Edited to add: yeah, I am kind of old...But around here, even youngsters like low gearing.
I'm young and I like low gearing too, you don't have to be old to appreciate low gearing. Grinding up a hill with a low cadence is simply dumb. Some gravel/adventure bikes are slowly turning into XC hardtails but they still come with road gearing. Even though most XC hardtails use a 34 chainring with a 10-50 cassette, or something like a 36/26 with an 11-42...
You're gonna see low gearing on a lot of gravel/adventure bikes after: Shimano comes out with something like a 46/30 for all of their groupsets, more 3rd party manufacturers start making 46/30 cranksets, and SRAM goes 12spd with a 10-50 on all their drop bar 1x groupsets.
I'm young and I like low gearing too, you don't have to be old to appreciate low gearing. Grinding up a hill with a low cadence is simply dumb. Some gravel/adventure bikes are slowly turning into XC hardtails but they still come with road gearing. Even though most XC hardtails use a 34 chainring with a 10-50 cassette, or something like a 36/26 with an 11-42.
You're gonna see low gearing on a lot of gravel/adventure bikes after: Shimano comes out with something like a 46/30 for all of their groupset, more 3rd party manufacturers make 46/30 cranksets, and SRAM finally goes 12spd with a 10-50 on all their drop bar 1x groupsets.
I've got a new bike in the works, and skipped the Shimano crankset in favor of a Praxis with 48/32 chainrings. Combined with the Ultegra 11-34 cassette and the GS RD, it should be low enough. (For reference, some gravel races around here include sustained climbs at grades of 20%+.)
I've got a new bike in the works, and skipped the Shimano crankset in favor of a Praxis with 48/32 chainrings. Combined with the Ultegra 11-34 cassette and the GS RD, it should be low enough. (For reference, some gravel races around here include sustained climbs at grades of 20%+.)
I'm on 1x with a 10-42 and a 38T chainring and 38-42 is not enough for me. I don't feel like I need to make an excuse like "I only have one leg, I live on Mount Everest" etc., it's simply not enough. End of story. Just look at what kind of gearing 3x trekkings come/came. I don't hear anyone complaining that the gearing is too low. I want to ditch the 1x and go back to 2x with a 46/30 and an 11-36. The only reasonably priced 46/30 is the FSA Adventure line, but i've heard pretty bad things about their BBs, even though they cost cost twice as much as an Ultegra BB.
I'd reconsider that 11-34, the steps at the bottom are pretty horrendous, the same as on an 11-42. IMO the SRAM 11-36 is spaced better.
I think it’s a nice option. Basically, you can now choose your preferred geometry. I would call the Warroad an endurance road bike with big tire clearance. That’s not a bad design for many people. Around here in Duluth MN, the actual gravel roads are usually fairly firm, so a bit smaller tire and agile geometry would do jut fine. Basically it’s a road bike, but you add some tire volume because of the unpaved nature of the roads. For that matter, our paved roads are worse right now than most Mtb trails, and potholes on pavement are sharper edged than those on gravel, so a road bike with fat tires makes a lot of sense here too.
On the other hand, there is nothing stopping anyone from putting skinny slick tires in a Warbird and riding that as their road bike.
So mostly id say it comes down to your geometry preferences.
As far a critics calling this to much niche within a nice, I really see it as an alternative. I couldn’t imagine anyone owning both a Warbird and a Warroad. Warroad and Cutthroat would seem the likely combo.
Of course there are other endurance road bikes with decent tire clearance/gravel bikes with short wheelbase out there too.
I looked at the geometry some more, only differerence in geometry seems to be the chainstays! I though they would have made the head tube angle steeper too, and probably the front lower, but stack and reach are identical, BB drop is only 2 mm different too, less than the variation in shoe soles and pedal thickness would create. Same with head angle, only 0.25 degree different, again within realm of tolerances and variation in tire size. Fork offset is identical. So all they changed was a shorter rear end? That does seem weird.
Seems like Warbi would have been a better name: A Warbird with the back shortened.
Shorter Chainstays should make the bike feel different, give it more pop, snappier acceleration. Because of the choice to go 650b (or small 700c), those chain stays are shorter than anything i have seen on a gravel bike. I doubt you could do that with a 40 x 700c tire.
I think it just shows that Salsa is doing well being the category leader for everything gravel/adventure.
Giving them another bike in the quiver to attract more roadie-type customers. That said lots of competition out there as every brand under the sun is getting onto the gravel gravy bike.
I hope everyone takes the time to find the stem that fits them best, regardless of what came stock on a complete bike.
chas wrote:Shorter Chainstays should make the bike feel different, give it more pop, snappier acceleration. Because of the choice to go 650b (or small 700c), those chain stays are shorter than anything I have seen on a gravel bike. I doubt you could do that with a 40 x 700c tire.
I agree that it would feel different, I was just surprised that they didn’t change other parameters to be more ‘roadbike-ish”, like a steeper headangle, which which gives a shorter front center to balance out the shorter rear center, or lower stack height for a more traditional roadracing style fit.
And indeed, those short chainstays are only possible because of the smaller wheel diameter they are designing for.
I wish that instead of designing a new bike with everything but the rear center the same as the other one, they had remade the Warbird, with a size specific design. If we assume the 57.5 was the design size and has the optimum ratio of front and rear centers for best handling and feel, then the 52.5 would need 401mm chainstays, and the 61 would need 452mm chainstays to keep the same 1.45x ratio front to rear. Thats a pretty extreme range, so even if they didn’t keep it identical ratios, at least changing the shortest sizes to 415mm and lengthening the biggest sizes to 440mm or so would be an improvement.
Slim wrote:I wish that instead of designing a new bike with everything but the rear center the same as the other one, they had remade the Warbird, with a size specific design. If we assume the 57.5 was the design size and has the optimum ration of front and rear centers best handling and feel, then the 52.5 would need 401mm chainstays, and the 61 would need 452mm chainstays to keep the same 1.45x ratio front to rear.
Except that's not generally how bikes are designed, and for good reason.
Chainstay length helps determine max wheel and tire size; those 401mm chainstays would mean that the 52.5 frame would only accommodate smaller tires than the larger sizes, while the 452mm chainstays on the size 61 would make for a very looong bike, which would dramatically affect handling. In other words, that kind of frame design would basically make the smaller bikes and the larger bikes two very different sorts of machines.
Except that's not generally how bikes are designed, and for good reason.
No, it's because stock bike designers are slaves to the geometry chart. Keeping the stays the same length makes for a heavy rearwards bias on big frames, which also dramatically affects handling.
No, it's because stock bike designers are slaves to the geometry chart. Keeping the stays the same length makes for a heavy rearwards bias on big frames, which also dramatically affects handling.
It also allows them to list just one tire clearance number. And it cheapens production cost. Sure. But the larger frames will also have different seat tube angles (and HTAs) to help with the handling.
But seriously, 401mm chainstays? You’d have to run 650b with smallish tires. And 452mm chainstays would make the bike handle like the Queen Mary.
waxthis wrote:Bummer the widest tire you can fit on the 700c is a 35mm. If it had been at least 40mm I may have made the jump.. Think I'll hang onto my Bird.
This makes no sense. If they gave it that much tire clearance they would have to lengthen the chainstays basically making it a Warbird.
Salsa engineer Pete Hall took on the monumental task of creating what would become Warroad:
“During development I saw Warroad as a road bike with a side of gravel. We succeeded in mixing the agility and responsiveness of a road bike with the confidence to turn down a sketchy road whenever the opportunity arises.”
Enter Salsa’s Endurance Road geometry. To combine responsive handling and quick acceleration with the stability to conquer rough roads without beating up the rider, Hall came up with a 71-degree head tube angle with a 51mm offset fork and 415mm chainstays. We also designed the bike with our Class 5™ Vibration Reduction System (VRS) for damping the harsh vibrations that are so rough on bikes and bodies.
Warroad also has dual wheel-size compatibility, with clearance for up to 700c x 35mm or 650b x 47mm tires."
End of story. Just look at what kind of gearing 3x trekkings come/came. I don't hear anyone complaining that the gearing is too low. 