Gravel / Gravé / Gnarmac / Groad / ATB

Studying in St Andrews, wave if you see me* out and about!

To anyone in StA, there's a tiny gravel group chat going, just students rn but open to all. Worth a shot mentioning here I suppose :)

*red and black 2001 GT Zaskar with surly fork and drop bars (I recognise people by their bikes lol)

Nice, welcome to the neighbourhood (Stainless CDF).

A snip at £4,750 https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/175247353232

"Let the market decide"

Gravel hive mind.
Which is better, GRX or Ekar?
AXS can get in the sea.
Long standing debate to be settled amongst myself and someone not on forum.

If Ekar is anywhere near as good as the old 10 speed Chorus groupset I had, GRX.

GRX is really good.

This is a custom build and probably the highest spec gravel bike you will ever see
...
Hunt gravel wheels

Aight. Also, I paid for 100% of the steerer, I'll use 100% of the steerer.

Axs, GRX Di2, Ekar, GRX. In that order. TBF they're all good.

sram red axs Bluetooth cable less gears and Bluetooth cableless dropper post

AXS can get in the sea.

AXS is king.

It really is not.
In my short ownership of AXS bikes:

1. Broke a MTB chain in Swinley
   
2. Broke a Road chain going uphill in Wimbledon
   
3. Broke a Road(Mullet) chain leaving a traffic light in Putney
   
   

The last one took me to hospital, and broke the Geekhouse. In each case- the RD hanger was checked for alignment, the chain set up properly, the derailleurs indexed correctly.
I'm quite small at 68kg average across the year, and I don't have loads of power.
So IMHO its not worth it, at all, and I do not trust it.
The above pattern is not isolated to me, either.

I am loving my AXS Xplr that I have swapped to, no issues so far and wouldn’t go back!

GRX crankset is gopping

But you can get it in sub-compact which is a plus

Sorry to hear you ended up in hospital, that sucks.

Incredible that three chains snapped, I wonder what the root cause was? What actually snapped, was it a pin or a plate? It’s quite unusual for chains to literally snap, so three is freaky!

For what it’s worth, I have axs on three bikes and it’s been flawless. Although it’s a shimano chain and cassette on the mtb. Sram chains on the other two.

Plates each time. I assumed the first was my fault so was obsessive with second and third install.
It was a shock, having had SRAM on every bike for a decade or so.

No gravel in lanzagrotty

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Good looking trail. Where's that? I've decided that in the future I'm only taking a gravel bike to Lanza. So many good tracks to explore.

Only 2 months till I’ll hopefully be in that exact spot or similar.

That's really intriguing. We sell and repair loads of AXS bikes, never got anyone coming with broken chains.

Hah I used to ride with a plantronics Gareth Cheeseman headset like that. I found it useful when having a big work skive and listening to boring AF work calls, pulling over to interject from time to time

Blue Sid though

Anybody own a Dolan GXA? Seems a similar offering to the Tripster, but slightly cheaper and with nicer paint IMO. Actually available immediately as a frameset. Imagine support is decent from Dolan. This build puts me off a bit! https://www.craftbikes.co.uk/forum/questions-discussions/dolan-gxa-gravel-bike-build-with-shimano-grx-di2

That first build is perfect for this thread.

Were the chains joined with split links or chaintool?