xraydog

Hello All,

I live in a rural part of northcentral PA. The majority of my riding is gravel, paths and fire roads, but, occasional roads. I currently keep a gravel bike and a road, bike.

As I approach retirement I was I was thinking of consolidating bikes. Spend some money for a nice gravel frame and 2 wheel sets: one for gravel and one for road.

Anyone have similar experience?

jimincalif

I have a Niner RLT RDO gravel bike. I use the OEM wheels for gravel and dirt (Lower end Stans wheels with 38mm G-One All Arounds) and I have carbon wheels with Schwalbe Pro One 30mm tires for road. These are November RCG 36 wheels. November thoughtfully includes some 0.25mm brake rotor shims (mine are centerlock) with new wheels so I was able to shim the rotors such that the wheels swap out perfectly, no mussing or fussing required.

The combo works well, I've had the second wheelset almost 1-1/2 years now. The All Arounds came with the bike, when they wear out I might get tires with a bit more shoulder for areas of sand that I've encountered. Now that I have the road wheels the gravel tires can be a bit more specialized as well.

FYI both wheelsets are running tubeless tires so I don't have to worry about what flat fix options I'm carrying when I switch wheels.

volosong

Tried that, and didn't work out very well. I built up a Pinarello FCX frame, (cyclocross), with Ultegra and gravel wheels. Purchased a second wheelset for road use. Easy enough to swap, but the rotors never lined up properly. It's my first hydraulic disc brake bike and I haven't learned how to maintain or adjust them. Rim brakes are so much easier.

It's just easier to keep a second, road-specific bike and leave the FCX as my gravel road bike. The geometry of the gravel bike is different than the road bike too. Meaning the fit to me. I'm more upright on the gravel bike and more aero, (lower), on the road bike. When I ride the gravel bike on the road, being more upright, I can't go as fast or as far. It's actually more tiring being more upright.

But swapping wheels could work. If you can get past the disc rotor alignment issue, then it is trivial.

xraydog

Interesting.... I was wondering about disk rotor alignment with different wheel sets. I am not sure of gravel bike options with rim brakes, other than custom built. I'd like to stay with disk breaks due to the mountains I ride and I am a larger rider.

volosong

Sounds like jimincalif solved that rotor alignment issue with some shims. As I inferred, I know little about disc brakes. Been using rim brakes for over fifty years and they are trivial, (for me), to maintain/adjust. Don't have a clue about disc brakes. In fact, my FCX is in the shop right now getting some front brake work performed upon it. Check with jimincalif to learn more about those shims he mentions.

Steve B.

I do this with my Cannondale Topstone. Aluminumn with a 105 group.

I use the original wheels which are 28 spoke, as my road wheels, with Conti Grand Prix 4 Season 28mm tires they run 32mm on the wider 24mm WTB gravel rims. Setup for flat road use with a 12-25 cassette Then a 2nd set of gravel wheels, 24mm wide, from Bicycle Wheel Warehouse, have the WTB Riddler gravel tires in 45 mm as tubeless. I had to use a shim on the 11-34 cassette, but the wheels interchange with perfect shifting and no rotor misalignment. Great system, but note that a gravel bike, even a carbon, is likely to weigh a few pounds more than a dedicated carbon road bike, if that matters to you.

Russ Roth

Just use the same hubs and cassette models for 2 builds, no worries, everything will line up the same. Just make sure the rear der is set to handle the swap in gear ranges and nothing to it. Build using different rims based on needs and wants and no changing tires every time.

jimincalif

Shimming the rotors was easy. FYI my hubs are Stans Neo on the OEM wheels and DT Swiss 350s on the RCG 36 wheels. Once I mounted the rotors on the RCGs and put them on the bike, the outside pads were lightly touching the rotors. So I realigned the calipers to center the pads over these rotors. Then I put the Stans wheels back in and sure enough the inside pad was lightly touching the rotors. I removed those rotors from the hubs, put on one 0.25mm shim, then the rotor and nut. Put the wheels back on and that's it, the rotors were nicely centered between the pads. I don't know how many times I've switched the wheels back and forth since, with zero rotor alignment issues. FYI the bike has thru-axles, not QR skewers, so the hub alignment in the frame/fork is the same every time.

Re geometry, there are gravel bikes that are much like endurance road bike geometry with maybe a longer head tube. Others are more cross-like.

Here is a link to the shims November sells (and included free with my wheels) https://novemberbicycles.com/product...shim-pack-of-4

And here's a link to Dave's musings on this topic. https://novemberbicycles.com/blogs/b...sets-of-wheels

Oto50plus

I have a Surley Orge that I have multiple wheel sets for it. All Shimano hubs. Everything lines up great. I switch out between rims with road tires and rims with MTB tires. Have a new Shimano Dynahub being built currently with a centerlock hub for the rotor. Im curious how that will line up. I use this one bike for everthing I ride. I just switch rims for the type of riding and surface I will be on. It works great for me.

xraydog

Thanks everyone for the great info and link to the artilcle "One Bike, Two Sets of Wheels"!

woodcraft

I have multiple wheelsets that go on two different bikes.

The road bike has three choices w/ rim depth, tire type & size, & cassette,

& the CX bike has four choices of road or dirt, knobs or file tread.

All rim brake, all tubular. Mostly CF on the road bike, & alu on the CX.

They swap easily & it's handy to have wheels ready to go, especially w/ tubular which take a little time for tire change.

hermanchauw

I don't know for you, but for me, once the swapping becomes somewhat regular, then it takes away from the enjoyment. More convenient to have multiple bikes with different set ups and just grab and go.

Iride01 

At one time I thought swapping wheels for different type riding conditions would be the thing. But never tried it because I also realized that different riding conditions will also require different gear combos and therefore different chain lengths and possibly DR adjusting to be the piss-perfect shifting I like.

And as mentioned above, when I want to ride, I just want to grab the bike and go. It's bad enough I have to fill my bottles, check tires and other stuff before the Grand Départ.

tony2v

My Chapter2 Ao has the Fulcrum Rapid Red 650B wheelset for gravel riding.
I was thinking about getting the Fulcum Rapid Red 700C wheelset for road/touring use, but having a few road bikes maybe not.

Steve B.

Swapping wheels takes 2 minutes, maybe less.

hermanchauw

plus clearing the space, plus getting the repair stand, plus setting up the repair stand...

Iride01 

Probably, but I might be a couple minutes slower because I'd have to wash my hands. But you didn't address the other issues I was concerned with.

I felt that if I wanted to ride gravel or some other surface for long periods, not just a few miles, then I'd probably want a different size cassette on the rear too. If the differences in cassette are large enough, I'd possibly have to change chains.

So if I had the room, I'd put up with the additional bike. It's not much more room hung up on the garage wall than two wheels. And I'd probably have less incentive to go out for the type ride my bike is not set up for even if all I had to do was use two minutes to swap wheels. Not saying that's you or the OP, but it is me. So it is a valid consideration.

pdlamb

I've been thinking about getting a new bike with disk brakes, with the extra wheelset as an option. The Luddite in me will insist on a triple to cover all kinds of terrain (asphalt AND gravel), so gearing isn't as much of a concern.

But then I think, why not spend the money on fancy tires, and adjust pressure as needed? Which leads to the question for the group, does anyone stop to reduce pressure when you come to a gravel section on a ride, or pump it up with you get back to pavement?

jppe

I’m doing what you’re asking about and it works super! I have a Lynskey GR260 Gravel bike with hydraulic disc brakes that I built up. For gravel I have Hope hubs on Light Bicycle rims and use Kenda Happy Medium 35 mm tires with tubes. The road wheels are 1500 gram Far Sports 38 mm with 25 mm Conti GP 4000 tires. The bike uses the quick release thru axles. I splurged for another set of rotors so there would already be a set of rotors on both wheelsets. It just takes a few minutes to swap wheelsets and the discs line up perfectly on both sets of wheels.

I’ve thought about that if I ever did another cross country ride or something similar with my wife sagging to just use that bike. That way if I needed to hit some gravel roads or unpaved paths it would be easy to swap wheels.

Steve B.

My chain is sized for an 11-34 11spd. cassette, which was stock on the bike. My 2nd wheelset with road tires has an 12-25 cassette as I’m not climbing huge hills. So no issues with the chain, Even then, with a 46/30 crank it can still deal with moderate climbs.

Iride01 

So I guess I'm just being stupid and need to sell my extra bikes and just keep the wheels since apparently my reasoning is faulty compared to others here. I didn't know the OP only wanted viewpoints that were positive toward one bike for everything.

I couldn't limit my bike to a 46 front. I use my 52 - 11 and 52 - 12 combination quite a bit. Been considering a 53 front ring. I also think that if I plan to include gravel or rough unmaintained roads in my ride routes, it will be for long stretches of such road. And in that case actually having a front with smaller rings makes more sense. But front rings take more time than two minutes to change, and again, I am not the type of person that wants to fiddle around much before going.

Steve B.

Nobody said don’t have a lot of bikes. I’ve got 7 currently, plus a few frames. There’s some redundancy. I think the more bikes you have, the easier to find another one that fills a niche the others don’t. That’s my excuse at least.

I could use my heavy steel tourer as my gravel bike except I don’t want to buy a 2nd set of wheels to keep a set of gravel tires mounted. It also weighs 5 lbs more than my gravel bike. And my gravel bike, even with the skinny tires still weighs 5 lbs more then my carbon road bike. But the gravel with skinny tires makes a great commuter bike. All have a purpose and the ability to easily change wheels on the gravel means one less bike I’ve no room to store.

pdlamb

Sounds like your use case is significantly different from OP. If you can benefit from a 53x11 setup as you approach retirement, by all means hang onto the road bike!

Paul Barnard

I have two wheelsets with my Lynskey Backroad. It is super easy to swap them out. I do have to loosen the brake calipers, give the brakes a squeeze and while still applying pressure, tighten the brakes back up. It may take 10 minutes tops to do the switch. I have larger tires with some tread for rides that will include gravel.

caloso

Yup. Road bike has race wheels and training wheels. Same with the TT bike.

On my CX bike, I can rotate 3 sets: road; gravel; and mud. Plus my son's CX bike is interchangeable with mine, so it's really like 5 sets between the two bikes.