Real life experience with 1 bike - two wheelsets?

[Jef58]

Not carbon, but a bike that gets overlooked is Hampsten's Strada Bianca. To me, that was a bike a few years ahead the all arounder segment and does exactly what this Crumpton does. I would buy one in Ti if I lived in an area that would utilize the bigger tire/on/off road riding.

[merckx]

Before I get tackled from my previous post, my point is to keep everything simple. You don't need a lot of equipment to find enjoyment in the sport, or to have an exceptional athletic experience. You don't need to chase perfection before you are allowed to enjoy the sport. Just because the market is offering a heap of crap, it doesn't mean that you have to consume it. I have found that the less convoluted things are, the more I enjoy the essence of simply leveraging my body forward on my bicycle.

[Kyle h]

I hear awesome things about the Allied AR for this purpose. I have a set of “road” wheels I use on my Firefly AR and on my Parlee Chebacco I had before, which have tubeless 30c tires and while it makes for a nice road ride, it falls flat quickly on fast road rides. The AR bikes just look a bit absurd with 25 or 28 tires which is why I’ve never ran them but I’m sure that would help a bit.

[Bob Ross]

My wife has a gorgeous titanium all-road that Carl Strong built for her about two years ago. The design brief was that it needed to take up to 700x38 knobbies with fenders, but still handle like a road bike when shod with 700x28 slicks.

Pretty sure if she lost the fender requirement this frame could take 700x40 easily.

Anyhow, she got it with two identical sets of wheels, one which wears Conti GP4000S in 28mm and the other Kenda Small Block 8 in 35mm, and she just changes out wheels depending on where she's going that day.

If I had space for another bike I'd probably do the same.

[Hakkalugi]

Absolutely. My fatbike gets 650b 2.6 in the summer, my gravel bike has 2 wheel sets. (650&700), my son’s now-too-small Diamondback 650c also ran 26” cx wheels. Worst case scenario is a few minutes with a 5mm Allen adjusting brakes, best case is matching hubs and rotors. Having different wheels for a single frame is really great and allows the bike to change personality.

[fignon's barber]

Originally Posted by Spdntrxi

…. Love the bike..semi-weight weenied to a limit since I wanted to take it off-road still.... Long story short despite a lightweight skinny tire setup it ( and I mean I) came up a little short on the faster group rides......

Purchased another Aero Road machine for those Saturdays on the rivet.

This. OP, it depends on the type of riding you do. If you do highly competitive rides, all road bikes don't cut it. If that's the case, I'd look at a full on road bike, probably disc, that can take 28-30mm tires. Maybe something like a Colnago V3RS, or a custom frame.

[GregL]

My gravel/all-road bike works great with two wheelsets. That’s what I do for our family vacations. For fast road rides, I run one wheelset with an 11-28 cassette and 700x25 tires. For gravel and light single track, it’s an 11-34 and 700x38 Gravel King SKs. According to Strava, I’m less than a minute slower on the toughest paved climb near our camp (3+ miles, average 5%) compared to my road racing bike.

Greg

[oldpotatoe]

I know that all hubs are supposed to be spaced the same.

Not exactly..'General specs' the same but actual dimensions are not, between different manufacturers..in fact, a lot of same hub swap needs a wee bit of tweaking..Through axle has helped that a lot.

[Duende]

DT Swiss hubs (off road) and Campy Hub (road) shimmed... works perfectly. No adjustments to rear derailleur needed. 11-34 and 11-32 cassettes too. .

Just took a little time to dial in, but no big deal really.

[Gummee]

I haven't ridden my 2 new CX bikes on the Wed Night Worlds rides, but I HAVE ridden my Boone on it. Got some road wheels/tires and went at it. It wasn't the Boone's fault I got dropped on Waterfall.

'Course, I typically run 34/50 in the front so I wasn't giving up too much in the way of gearing.

I have some Nextie/FN Aero rims coming for a disc aero road bike, but I'll toss em on the CX bike(s) and see how that works 'for kicks.'

The disc areo road bike has 50/34 rings on it now 'cause Praxis didn't have any full-size rings available for the crank I'm running

M

[Miller76]

I spent a lot of time going back on forth on this idea a few years ago. I still don’t have the “right” bike but it’s a good good enough for now. I ended up with a Mason Bokeh that is designed for both 650b and 700c. Gearing is 50/34 up front and 11/34 on the rear. When I ordered it I went for 650b with the mindset of getting a nice set of 700c hoops for it at some stage. With 650b it’s great, I rode it at D2R2 with 650b, but when I found a good deal on some 700c wheels from Reynolds, I jumped. That’s been 18 months now and I’ve not put the 650b back on once. The 650b wheelset has very heavy tires with a very aggressive tread pattern.

I’m hoping to fit some narrower tires on the 700c and use it for the weekly saturday shop road ride. With narrower tires on the 700c wheels I hope that it pushes me to find a nicer set of tires in 650b for the gravel loops I enjoy out around Bedminster NJ.


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[doomridesout]

I've been riding a Seven Evergreen designed around either 650x42 or 700x28 as my only bike for the last year and a half. If I was in better shape, I'd miss having a pure road bike for the fast rides. As it is, I'm going to be dropped by my fast friends when the pace goes up either way. I'm pretty happy with my choice, and particularly with 650b for mixed surface riding. My favorite rides are 80% bad pavement, 20% gravel. 650b slicks help the paved part feel fast without being undergunned on the dirt.

Riding with 700x28s, the bike feels like 95% of my old road bikes, which is all I really need.

[zambenini]

I have been doing this with a serotta cx for a bit. Bike is good enough on the road for fun, but I am not a racer any more and don't ride group rides. It would be fine if I did but not as spirited. I would say one bike to rule them all is good with two wheelsets, but if space allows (and in my case money and time are the determining factors) then two bikes is better. The wheelsets I had were similar enough though that the differences were somewhat mino, but I suppose if you had some really fast ones?

[benb]

I would like to do this, I've tried it in the past with my All City Space Horse.. not really to great success.

I would like to try this again to simplify the stable. (Though I only have 3 bikes).

Since I'm in Boston the Seven Evergreen would be way up my list to try it too. Even if it wasn't Seven I would likely want to think about Custom for this.

My impression is this use case is very sensitive to the geometry. You need to get the balance just right or you compromise the handling too much with one wheelset or the other if the size difference in tires is too large. Also it seems foregone in this discussion but I feel like making this work really requires disc brakes as well. With rim brakes the caliper mount points become a big deal to get right to get it working on both wheelsets and kind of restrict you to both wheelsets being the same width.

I have not tried it with a 650b/700c setup, maybe that makes the geometry changes easier to get around? What I ran into with my Space Horse was:

1) Since it's rim brake (Canti/V) if I ran a faster setup with a normal rim I had trouble getting the brakes right because the big tire wheelset was wider.

2) If you go from a 25c setup to a 38-40c setup the handling difference is pretty large and/or annoying. My bike really likes the bigger tires & doesn't like tires too small. A 32c set for the "fast" setup and a 38-40c for the "dirt" setup is about the most I can vary. You get used to it and the bike is totally stable at all speeds but it feels like the steering is too fast if you use tires that are too small.

My bike also does not fit me perfectly. Contact points are fine but it's not a frame that really fits me perfect so that is a factor in the handling.

Theoretically I'm at a point where the right bike like this could be my only bike. I don't MTB that much anymore, and I am not likely to start doing more dangerous/reckless/risky MTB in my 40s & 50s. If I get rid of the MTB then I don't really need two different road bikes. Having two does allow one to be cheaper so I don't feel worried about locking it up/commuting/whatever though, and two is better for avoiding maintenance downtime.

[NHAero]

I'd look into this if I was living in a small urban apartment. As it is, I have the space, and I have the Firefly pure road bike wearing 700x28, the Anderson with 700x37 and fenders, hbar bag, and a rack, and the Litespeed dropbar 26er with 26x2.2 file tread tires, and each has a easily defined niche depending on where I'm riding that day. It's pretty nice to just pick the bike off the hook and go.