Quote:
Originally Posted by pbarry
It's true, the numbers are all over the place with these bikes. Some are more adventure bikes, with the intent to be on rockier terrain with bike packing gear. Others are tuned more towards paved and smooth gravel with little to no load. A bunch are trying to be one bike for any use, and there are certainly compromises with doing that. Lynskey's gravel geometry has me confused: Slack HTA with 77.75 BB drop. Surely it holds a line well, but pedal clearance is hampered.
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I think pedal clearance is overrated, unless you're doing particularly rough terrain. Go back 10 years and most road bikes were designed around 23mm tires and 70mm bb drop--and even that was usually overkill outside of crit racing. Go up to a 40mm tire and you're still riding 10mm higher on the Lynskey than you would be on the older road bike. I believe Richard Sachs's cross bikes all use an 80mm bb drop. I don't know how the scale of pedal clearance got so deep into people's heads, but unless you're taking a gravel bike on "mountain bike" trails, I doubt you'll ever have to worry about pedal clearance.