New Gravel Bike vs 2015ish XC MTB

[claytramey]

Originally Posted by spoonrobot

XC conversion to drop-bar - fit comes from shorter stem (speed up steering), wider bars (slow down steering), and higher bars (ride in the drops). If you size down often you end up too far forward for technical and fast riding and the bars are too low without high rise stem. You want to be around 5-40mm stem length so you can stay in a good spot relative to the front wheel pivot point.

If you know your contact points run potential bikes through bikegeo.net to see how things stack up. IMO, it's very hard to maximize the potential of the bike if your handlebars are much lower than your saddle.

I've converted three different XC bikes to drop bars, mainly for racing in the N GA mountains and riding the single-track near my house. I've also done a lot of gravel with them. The most relevant thing for you is that riding on the road or gravel, the aero and hysteresis losses are huge. Enough that I went from the B+ group to the C group the few times I raced flat or mixed gravel races or group rides. This was using the fastest tires I could find and optimizing my position for the races, still a big change.

That said, my drop bar MTB is the most fun bike I own. I ride it more than my regular MTB or gravel bikes and it is a phenomenal racing bike for mountain races where the field is split between MTB and gravel. I heartily recommend trying a conversion.

A lot of good info here. Thank you!

[p nut]

Why don’t you just get a proper monster cross? ie, Wolverine, Gorilla Monsoon, Fargo, Flannimal, etc. that can take big fat MTB tires?

All the mountain bikes I’ve converted to dropbars have never worked out for me. Funky handling/geo.

[charliedid]

Chamois Hagar

[girlscantell]

Originally Posted by p nut

Why don’t you just get a proper monster cross? ie, Wolverine, Gorilla Monsoon, Fargo, Flannimal, etc. that can take big fat MTB tires?



All the mountain bikes I’ve converted to dropbars have never worked out for me. Funky handling/geo.

YES. I went back and forth and eventually converted an old mountain bike. It didn't do the smooth gravel well. I just got a Black Mountain Monster Cross Disc and will never go back. So much fun to ride on bad roads and gravel. Even the smoother singletrack.