One bike to rule them all

Jimbop wrote:
They are very good looking machines.  Is it nice and compliant?  Any idea what the frame weighs?  If it had internal cable routing and an extra cage mount under the down tube it would be perfect.  I'm gonna fire them a mail so see if they could customise.

Mine is more compliant than my 2018 Specialized Diverge but the Lynskey has 40c tires vs the 38c tires on the Diverge. No idea on frame weight, but my bike was about 20 lbs without pedals but with the rear rack on a GR 260 with Di2. Mine has two cage mounts and I think different models have different cable routing. Mine is internal but Di2.

The bike will be a little heavier than a comparable carbon bike. Maybe about a pound. What you gain is a bike that it virtually indestructible. I’ve had a Ti mountain bike for 10 years. Probably won’t go back to any other material.

chas wrote:

I would love to test ride one, but hate to spend that coin on a bike i haven't ridden.*  Still, I see them on sale at Nashbar and other places, and its tempting.  

(*says the guy who bought a Canyon, LOL).

You can return any bike for 30 days. I really liked mine and really felt comfortable after speaking with the rep a few times. They made their estimated delivery date, but most people say it’s about 50/50 that they will.

chas wrote:

I like that one (and the UP too), but for a "budget" high end bike I got a Canyon.  It is so smooth riding that I don't need  2" tire in the rear, but I do use one up front when I'm in the mood.

Which Canyon did you get?  I thought the only 'official' gravel they offer is the Grail?

panhndl wrote:
Mine is more compliant than my 2018 Specialized Diverge but the Lynskey has 40c tires vs the 38c tires on the Diverge. No idea on frame weight, but my bike was about 20 lbs without pedals but with the rear rack on a GR 260 with Di2. Mine has two cage mounts and I think different models have different cable routing. Mine is internal but Di2.

The bike will be a little heavier than a comparable carbon bike. Maybe about a pound. What you gain is a bike that it virtually indestructible. I’ve had a Ti mountain bike for 10 years. Probably won’t go back to any other material.

Durability is a huge appeal of Ti over carbon - when I'm out riding off-road there is the occasional spill and when bikepacking or putting my bike on a train even if i'm careful someone else might not be, so the downside of carbon is that i'd worry about it more.  Looking at the Pro Gr frame in detail it struck me that if they inverted the downtube then it might have similar aerodynamics to the 3T Exploro - as it is it looks a bit aero inefficient having a wide flat downtube in the airstream - ok not a big deal on gravel but for fast road rides that could have an impact.  A few q's re Lynskey:
1) I popped them a mail via their contact page on the website but i seem to recall doing that previously and never hearing back.  Does anyone have an email address or should I just call them?
2) They have a 20% off sale right now.  Do they do bigger sale discounts or is this the max? I've heard of people getting crazy good deals on them so want to understand what they usually are.

panhndl wrote:
You can return any bike for 30 days. I really liked mine and really felt comfortable after speaking with the rep a few times. They made their estimated delivery date, but most people say it’s about 50/50 that they will.

The problem is that i would be buying a frameset so it would be quite lot of effort to build the bike up and then unbuild it if i didn't like it.  That's me being lazy and i could overcome that :-)  The other problem is that i don't know if they would do the 30 day return on a frameset if i bought it through a UK shop.  Not being able to test ride is also a factor that i'd not thought enough about.  What i find odd is that i can only find one review of the Pro GR online - JOM from Gravelcyclist.  Anyone know of any others?

Honestly, I think I got fairly good response with email. I can’t remember exactly how I did it though. I might have made an account first. Anyway, I think my contact was Jaime. We talked a couple times before my order and I never felt hurried during our conversation. I would try phoning in if you don’t have luck with email. It’s a pretty small operation so weekends the reps are probably not in. You might wait a day or two and see if they get back to you.

An alternative option is to check eBay. Often they have leftover frame sets they are selling on eBay for a pretty significant discount.

I don’t think Lynskey does a lot of donations of their bikes for tests by publications. JOM did like the PRO GR so much he kept it. That coming from a guy who rides a LOT of very nice bicycles. There are a few Lynskey groups on Facebook. I would ask around there for impressions of the various bicycles you’re interested in. Lots of the riders have multiple bikes and can tell you way more than most on here, but remember that it’s a fan club so you’re not likely to hear as many negatives as elsewhere. Lynskey is one of the most affordable Ti bike out there. That’s a big reason I purchased Lynskey.

I financed my bike. I doubt they can do that for someone in England but it made the purchase a little less shocking.

panhndl wrote:FYI Lynskey has a sale where you use COMPLETE30 in the coupon area at check out and receive 30% off any complete bike.  makes for some monster savings.

Nice reply - thx! I've been pondering this topic more and learning more about geometry. I wonder if perhaos I'm going to arrive at the answer that I might want to consider moving my mindset to a two bike solution - keep my CAADX for gravel, bikepacking and commuting, and a dedicated road bike. To get to the answer I need to spend a decent amount of time testing gravel geometry frames in both Ti and carbon, and carbon roadies. I guess something like an Orbea cross bike might be a good compromise but I'm not sure ye t

I've just put an order in for an Enigma Escape after demoing one for a week. Incredible bike. It'll be my one and only, and replaces a carbon Ridley road bike and a heavy Specialized AWOL adventure bike. The Escape feels great on road and off. A little bit of bottom bracket flex when I'm really hauling up a steep hill in too high a gear, but I'm heavy and a powerlifter. Overall I was really impressed by how quick and efficient the demo bike was, even at a size too big for me and running gravel tyres. Worth a test ride. The tubes are round but massive, so it looks pretty modern to my eye. I'm getting one of the beaded and anodised finishes, and practicality be damned. I've bought the frameset and will build it up with Ultegra 8020, clutch rear derailleur, Rotor 46/30 crankset, Thomson alu and carbon cockpit and Reynolds ATR2 carbon wheels. Should come in at just over 8kg for a fast and very durable build.

Might also be worth considering high end steel - a good steel frame can give a really punchy ride that belies the weight of the frame, plus you could invest the frame savings on lighter parts. The ride quality can be amazing too, if done right. I live in Australia so local options are a bit limited, but if I were in the UK I would definitely have tried the Fairlight Secan and Donhou DSS3, plus the aluminium Mason Bokeh since that reviews so well.

Late to the party again. I'm already there: 44 Custom Steel with 2 wheel sets. Both wheel sets were built by Dustin Gaddis at Southern Wheel Works. Wheel set 1 uses a White Industries CLD hub laced to a Hed Belgium Plus rim with an 11-36 11 speed SRAM cassette. The wheel is currently wearing 40 mm Schwalbe Allrounds. Initially I set these up tubeless, but I converted to tubes when I rotated the tires front to back to balance tread wear and get a few more miles out of them. My second wheel set uses I9 hubs laced to DT Swiss R411 rims, an 11-28 11 speed cassette. Last season I ran 28 mm Schwalbe Pro-one tubeless. The do-all frame that these wheels run on was built for me by my friend and neighbor Kris Henry -44 Bikes. I use wheel set 1 in rural NH where I ride 50/50 paved/unpaved, mostly alone or in small groups. I use wheel set 2 when riding 100% pavement - especially in the SC low country- in large group fast paced rides. Here are some pic's courtesy of Kris Henry of 44 Bikes.
Here is the design Kris came up with to match my long legs, short torso and achy lower back:
 

Notice the tall head tube and seat tube as well as the relatively short effective top tube. Not exactly a racing bike -- but extremely comfortable and stable. Although I sometimes ride with my roadie friends in large groups at 20+ mph, I'm very happy on my light weight I9 wheel build an 28mm tires.
Here is a picture of my 44 Huntsman courtesy of Kris Henry:
 
Here are some more pic's taken by me of my "one bike to rule them all". When wearing my gravel wheels, the bike weighs an honest 21.1 pounds with pedals ready to ride. Switch to my road wheels and the weight drops to around 20 pounds: https://photos.google.com/album/AF1QipMEXUguAQAA8kY-kFkf_E7873xHNFEgNSXhee7k

Quick update - yesterday I did the Falling Leaves Rough Ride, which is on fhe edge of the Peak District. The route was 75km and the terrain varies between bridleways, double track (everything from deeply rutted muddy tracks for farm vehicles to smoother more gravely), fields, woodland single-track, very technical rocky single-track descents, hikeabike and tarmac. Maybe 50% of people were on mtbs and I think overall they probably went faster and had an easier time of it. I loved it - 75km, 1400m of climbing and it took all my fledgling fitness and bike handling to get around. It underlined that it's all well and good to have a nice compliant Ti (or carbon) frame but if the front end is very stiff then you're going to suffer regardless. I saw a few people on Specialized Diverges and I asked them about their steeds - they were loving life. The 20mm of Future Shock bar suspension was soaking up some harshness and the CGR posts looked comfy too. I think it might be the perfect compromise for me. The only annoying factors are the price - I'd like a frameset so I can use my old 105 groupset and then upgrade to Ultegra or Di2 later and the only option is the S-works which is £3350. Also in the ideal world I'd have a Ti frame with Future Shock for longevity and general abuse taking but that dotsn't exist and who knows if someone will copy the FS suspension system.

I'm going to see if I can borrow a Diverge for a day or ideally a weekend from my nearby Specialized Concept store to evaluate it.

Maybe check out the Redshift Shockstop suspension stem - it's getting good reviews and probably adds about the same weight as future shock while fitting any bike.

You could also get some gel pads to fit under the bar tape. They came on my AWOL and they're really effective.

I was at a gravel bike race yesterday and a guy there had the carbon Open U.P with carbon wheels. Boy was that ever a sweet lightweight bike. My bike weighs in the 20 lb range(Raleigh Roker) and his bike felt a lot lighter than mine.

Zman
 

So i rode the Falling Leaves Rough Ride last weekend and maybe 1/3-1/2 of the field we on MTBs. I thought to myself "Ha! Those mtb guys have zero chance of keeping up with us gravellers!". 4h 53m later a solidly battered and beaten body trickled over the line looking vaguely like me. I had multiple problems:
1) I'd slammed my stem the previous w/e and regretted the extra weight on my arms and trying to crane my head/neck upwards.
2) I had been loving my G-One Allround tyres throughout the dry months we were blessed with in an unusually good UK summer. Whilst the course wasn't that wet there were muddy sections and i felt like a giraffe on roller skates.
3) I would've given body parts for some form of suspension in the front end and ideally some at the rear too.
4) A few times my CAADX felt just a little bit too agile and skittish when i was craving for stability on sketchy descents.
5) I spoke to a couple of Diverge owners and they were more comfortable and happier than i was.

Whilst a Diverge wasn't going to overcome some of the terrain like a mtb, I am pretty sure that the Future Shock stem suspension gave them a little more comfort, as did their CG-R posts and the slacker head angle might've made their bikes less skitish.

All of the above got me thinking on this topic a lot more and googling about Diverges. I found a shop selling 2018 Diverge Sports, which is the carbon frame model with the Tiagra mech brakes groupset. It was (is still today) down from £2000 to £1529.99 and then i found a 10% discount code, which took it to £1379. The alternative was at least £2k on a Ti frame, and then i know i'd want a ShockStop too, which i suspect isn't as good as the FutureShock. I'm not a pro rider but having hinged bar suspension seems unnatural compared to a vertically moving bar suspension? Also I'd guess that progressive springs are better than elastomers but i'm no engineer/ergonomic guru.

Anyhoo, after pouring over the geometry chart I figured that it would likely fit me, be more comfortable and if i wanted to get more aero for road rides due to the 5cm taller stack height then I could stick a down angled stem on it but i think the curvature of my spine/neck means i'm never going to get comfortable for long distances on a super slammed rig. The geometry, if i understand well should also be a bit more stable than my CX bike and my lack of off-road skills came sharply into focus on Sunday so I figure building up skills on a more stable bike might reduce my crash count. So...I took a punt and bought one - i can always return/refund it in store (i did click and collect rather than get it shipped) if the fit is wrong when i go to collect it next weekend.

In the short term the only upgrade I'm planning is a CG-R seatpost (I have a Rose RC-170 Flex seatpost, which is good but if the CG-R offers more then great) but I'd love to get hydro brakes, ideally Ultegra but if i'm going Ultegra then i'd be hard pressed not to want to go the extra mile up to Ultegra Di2. That's for a future thread though.

Does anyone know if the Fact 9R Diverge frame is Di2 compatible?

Anyone think the carbon 2018 Diverge Sport is a dumb idea/terrible bike or might I have stumbled upon what might, for me anyway, be 'the one'?

From what I've read the CGR is no where near as compliant as a Ergon CF3/Canyon VCLS2.0.

I have a CGR on my road bike and can't tell any difference.  They used to claim almost 20mm of flex then changed it to 7, which is about the same as regular carbon.  They're overrated and overweight for what they do.

In my humble opinion and experience (I have spent too much time on this road and even bought some property nearby), you are going to get more value with carbon or aluminum. That being said, the one bike quiver sounds awesome, but is pretty tough to make work. In essence you pretty much always end up feeling like you sacrificed something you really want (or at least I did).

To save us some time, where I ended up is finally embracing that the best “do anything” bikes are the endurance race/all road bikes like the Trek Domane, Spec Roubaix, Canyon Endurace, new Giant Defy, 3T Strada, etc. They allow you to run 32mm-35mm tires which are more than adequate for most bad roads and light to moderate gravel, but they are light enough and stiff enough to be pretty good road bikes.

What you almost always miss out on with those bikes is the wider 40mm+ tire clearance which is the norm for gravel events, a lightweight complete build, and aero tube shaping. You might get 1-2 of those things, but not more than that.

I chose a Trek Domane and have loved it, but ultimately realized I want more tire clearance and a racier feel. That has led me to the new Giant Revolt Advanced that I am planning to get after I tested it this past weekend. It checks more of my boxes than other bikes have. To get there though, I had to accept that some of my interests just won’t get met with one bike, so I prioritized and found a bike that provided most of it. Hope this helps. It’s a tough journey.

Oh and people are raving about the Ibis Hakka MX as a do anything bike and the new Pinarello Grevil looks promising too.