Do you ride 650B or 700c with your gravel bike?

[xeladragon]

Originally Posted by donalrey

My "road" bike has 700x35c Rene Herse Bon Jon Pass. Perfect balance between road and dirt/gravel.

My "gravel" bike, for the most part has on 26x2.3" Rene Herse Rat Trap Pass. This is my favorite tire - it just rolls so smooth both on paved and dirt. I have a 650b set up as well with Rene Herse 650bx48c Juniper Ridge - I'll throw it on if I know I'll be riding some rougher stuff.

My same setup... 700c BJPs and 650b Juniper Ridges on my two all-road bikes.

[xtheendisnearx]

700x38 Gravelking

[polar8]

Originally Posted by xtheendisnearx

700x38 Gravelking

I was looking at those for my build, how do you like them?

[Smitty2k1]

I'm building up my first gravel/allroad bike, a Black Mountain Cycles Road+. The designer said it was designed for 650bx47 so I got some WTB Horizons for it.

If I like it a lot I may pick up some 700x32 road tires, but definitely sticking to the wider 650b's for gravel.

[simonov]

Originally Posted by Smitty2k1

I'm building up my first gravel/allroad bike, a Black Mountain Cycles Road+. The designer said it was designed for 650bx47 so I got some WTB Horizons for it.

If I like it a lot I may pick up some 700x32 road tires, but definitely sticking to the wider 650b's for gravel.

With some light wheels and Rene Herse Stampede Pass 650x42 tires, you may find that it's as good on the road as with the 700x32s. Maybe even better depending on the types of rides you do.

[lavi]

Originally Posted by donalrey

26x2.3" Rene Herse Rat Trap Pass. This is my favorite tire

I have these as well. Wow. What a fun ride. Makes me feel like a kid again.

[Bici-Sonora]

650 x 48 Gravel King non SK (file tread) for mixed surfaces. 700 x 35 for smoother dirt roads and what passes for paved roads in Tucson


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[Geeheeb]

BOTH! 700 35c on the poprad, 650 47 on the kona rove.

[owly]

Yesterday ran a 27.5 x 2.1 Thunder Burt rear with a Rocket Ron front over the rocky/loose/rough stuff.
Once again clarifying in my mind the ride height/feel of a 2.1 is perfect for me. Quite a bit of tyre weight though!

700x32/33 gives about the same height, so I'm going to get some 33mm knobby X-One to replace the same in 35mm. i.e. AllRound rear with Bite front.

[Sparshall]

Horses for courses...or something like that. I ride both depending on how far and terrain. 700x37 Gravelking slicks can handle almost everything in my neck of the woods, but sometimes you can beat 650bx47 WTB horizons at 28psi for a plush ride.



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[SlowPokePete]

I'm on 650b (HED Belgium plus w/WI rear SON dynamo front)...

....at this point I'd love to throw my I9's with carbon rims (700) back on there cause I know they were faster (they are quite a bit lighter after all), but I like the dynamo too much.

Looking forward to when I pull the Juniper Ridges Endurance (after I do the Farmer's Daughter) and go back to the Switch Back Hill EL's...



SPP

[mtb_frk]

How do you like your haanjo?

Originally Posted by Sparshall

Horses for courses...or something like that. I ride both depending on how far and terrain. 700x37 Gravelking slicks can handle almost everything in my neck of the woods, but sometimes you can beat 650bx47 WTB horizons at 28psi for a plush ride.



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[Sparshall]

Originally Posted by mtb_frk

How do you like your haanjo?

It’s an awesome bike. Took mine down to the frame and built it up as seen. I’ve taken it on 3 day bikepacking trips and fast gravel races. Historically they’ve been spec’d pretty oddly, but I think they’re getting better.

I’m actually selling it now because I’ve got too many other projects going on.

[cabriggs]

I've got an alu Diverge with 700x30c tires. I've always thought they were on the skinny side for gravel, but they've handled the limited gravel I've done so far just fine. That includes the 46 mi D2R2 Green River ride last year, which I think has somewhere around 15-20 mi of actual dirt/gravel and the rest pavement.

This year I plan to ride the 100k at D2R2 and a friend who's done it (and is on this forum) has told me I should be fine on these tires. I trust him.

[RobJ]

Originally Posted by HTupolev

2.1" 26ers.




Because the bike's 1984 Stumpjumper frameset was designed for it, both in terms of clearances and the height of the canti posts.

I'm currently building up a Black Mountain Road+, and it will similarly use 650b. I could stick 700c wheels on it, but the tire clearance wouldn't be nice for the regional double-track roads.

My hardtail is a 29er, but I don't use it much.


Fine for the most part. When dealing with something like a log over the road, it feels like some more rollover would be nice. For dealing with typical gravel roughness, tire choice and setup seems a lot more impactful than wheel diameter.


Depending on the gravel, I wouldn't call a wide slick "not a gravel tire."

I'm running Rat Trap Pass ELs on the above bike. They have an extreme lack of traction on some types of snow and wet organic surfaces, but grip fine on rocky aggregate whether wet or dry. If your gravel is a mud bog, they're a terrible gravel tire. If your gravel is hardpack and crushed rock, they do the job well.


"Sensation that we all love of flying along on paved roads" depends in large part on you. Different people identify and value different sensations of flying along on paved roads.

A big consideration here also is that gravel bikes often have very different geo from traditional road bikes. From a performance standpoint the implications of this are subtle, but from a feel standpoint it can be dramatic. An Open UP is basically a road bike with wide tires, a Salsa Cutthroat is more like a rigid mountain bike with drop handlebars.

My Stumpy's geometry is basically that of a beach cruiser: mountain bikes in 1984 were still closely inspired by the old Schwinn cruisers that had been built into klunkerz in the 1970s. Sticking an aggressive road fit on that beach cruiser geometry has some whacky consequences. Out of the saddle at low speeds it's floppy, steering at cruising speed feels deliberate and weighty, and keeping the bike leaned in tight paved corners can require conscious counter-steer. On the whole, the handling doesn't fall anywhere in the remote vicinity of "lively", although I'm not sure where I'd put it on the bicycle spectrum: I don't think it handles much like any bicycle that's been set up for its frame's intended purpose.
But.
When I'm trucking along at road cruising speeds on it, I feel like I'm trucking along at road cruising speeds. To me, it doesn't feel "slower" than it is, and its performance is close enough to my skinny-tired road bikes that I often use it for spirited road riding. There are days when it's a blast, and days when I thirst for something that handles lighter.
...It'll be interesting to see how the Black Mountain Road+ ends up, its steering geometry is much more road-like than the Stumpy. It should handle quite light, even with tires nearly 2" wide.

How you respond to the feel of the tires is a big factor in perception of speed. The first time I rode with the Rat Traps on the Stumpy, I wondered if the speedometer was reading high, it felt like I was going slower than I was. But that feeling soon went away.

I keep coming back looking at this bike. I love this thing.


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