thehammerdog

So I love the idea of a do anything road bike and I am dabbling with the size of my tires for my all arounder but I went to check out a Salsa and a All city bike with gravle grinder specs and I was kinda let down. Do we need 35" or bigger tires? or what ever they were...the tires were HUGE bike looked crazy at what point is it a joke. One had cantis the other disc brakes the frames were very nice but Tires just too dam large not sure the bike would in any way be road worthy or fun....One version had deep V 26' wheels with panniers I'm like what is it?
Any how....I decided to stick with my proven old school steel steed and slap on 27's and say WTF!

knobster

I think unless you're doing those "race" gravel organized rides, it doesn't matter. Ride what works. For me 32's work fine. I don't ride gravel that fast and that depends on how deep it is. I do like riding gravel but after breaking my leg last month on my motorcycle while riding gravel, I don't know if I'll be riding them again.

RPK79

I take my 23s on gravel/dirt roads all the time. As long as they haven't just laid down fresh gravel I don't have any issues. I do plan on getting some 30s specifically for gravel rides though and I expect that will be more than adequate. Luckily my road bike can handle a larger tire...

therhodeo

I ride a cross bike bit Hutchinson Bulldog cross tires. The gravel thing is getting big and you'll find guys riding everything from fast racey cross bikes to fat bikes with enourmous balloon tires. I like going fast and don't want to fight a 30lb bike.

bruce19

This is my do everything bike.......Raleigh Bicycles Rx1.0 - 2011 Road

First bike I've ever had that left me feeling like I don't need anything more.

bikemig 

If you're not racing, a vintage mtb with trekking bars makes a pretty good all rounder. You could also go the drop bar route with a vintage mtb but that involves more work.

High end vintage mtbs tend to be pretty inexpensive as well. And fitting a fat tire is no problem obviously.

WhyFi

You rockin' a penny farthing?

merlinextraligh

It depends on where you're riding, and how you're using the bike.

The point of "gravel grinders" is to give wide tire clearance so you have the option to run wide tires and or fenders if you need.

You can always put narrower tires on that bike, but you can't put 40mm on most road or racing CX bikes.

Well maintained dirt road, you can easily do with 23mm tires, although 28mm will likely work better.

Very nasty gravel, and "roads" that are really not much more than a trail, like there is on Dirty Kanza and you want 38-40mm or wider.

Also, if your riding off pavement, and touring, you may want bigger tires to deal with the load.

Pretty easy to change tires with conditions. Not so easy to put wide tires on a conventional road bike.

MileHighMark

I run 28mm tires on 25mm rims, and the effective tire width ends up being 30.5mm. Works surprisingly well for a wide range of conditions.

In my experience, a steel road bike with 47-57 caliper brakes works well enough for me that I don't need a dedicated/bespoke gravel rig.

RPK79

That's kind of how I'm seeing it. I don't think my steel road bike is going to hold me back enough on the gravel to warrant a gravel specific bike. I may look into an upgrade in my wheels and use my current ones for dedicated gravel with some wider tires.

Terry66

I felt the same way about the Salsa Fargo. I didn't need tires "that" big and thought it looked silly with smaller tires. That's why I went with the Salsa Vaya. I built mine up from a frameset and a donor Trek that I got on CL. It will handle up to 45s I think. I run 32 slicks on it most of the time. I also have 38 All Terrains and 42 Tour Rides. That is the beauty of the bike. I can run it stripped down with the slicks and it is a decent road bike. I can put on fenders and a rack and it is great for commuting. Put on the fatter tires and take it on the gravel. And I can put on front and rear panniers and it is a stable touring bike.

MileHighMark

I owned a Salsa Vaya for a few years, and had to sell it due to financial issues. To be honest, I don't miss it. If the terrain is more than 32mm tires can handle, I grab my 29er.

UnfilteredDregs

Vaya is a touring bike... Not a gg.

LesterOfPuppets

My favorite gravel setup is a rigid 26er with drop bars, brifters, 39/52 double, 11-32 9sp, 1.9" semi-slicks.

Psimet2001 

Too used to facebook...was looking for the "like" button.

Psimet2001 

Gravel.

Gotta figure some of this out product wise as one of the best gravel races in the country is within 20 minutes from my house and usually brings in a lot of the pros and OEMs I know from cross.

In general all of the gravel stuff I have done I have accomplished on a cross bike with 33mm tires. I have also ridden a cross bike as a commuter with Panniers, raced on it, and even trained and raced road races on it (with a full sized crank being swapped onto it).

They started coming out with this sort of gravel designation for cross like frames that were almost always disk with even wider spreads to accommodate larger tires. I can say without a doubt that those on fat bikes and gravel bikes with larger tires were able to easily and smoothly ride past me on every gravel ride i have done. That's not really saying much...though....

Gotta say I always run the tires a little harder as I don't want to really drag on the pavement sections and don't want to flat. Result is that with 33's I really have to employ a lot of my handling experience (something I am actually still good at) just to keep the bike upright in some places. Unnerving at best and dangerous at worst.

So...do you need wide tires? Depends on what you are really riding. Beauty of gravel bikes is that you can put any tires on there you want as long as they didn't sell you 29'r wheels with it. Road, cross, gravel, mtb...

FWIW - Specialized is now prototyping/riding an "in-between" bike? something that isn't necessarily a road bike or a gravel bike. I thought that would be a cross bike but I guess they disagree. Should be interesting how polluted they make this.

TinkerinWstuff

My Anyroad is supposed to be in the GG class and has 28s

kaliayev

My old steel sport tourer fits the bill for me. 28's for the road and 35's for when I know I'm going to be mostly on gravel.

Terry66

Shhhh....Don't tell Salsa...they refer to it as "Road Touring / Gravel / Road Riding" on their website.

unterhausen

there is a gravel forum now that cyclocross racing got its own forum. You don't have to use knobby tires on your gravel bike. Around here it's not a bad idea to have some tread, but large volume is required. I rode some really large 30mm tires last year and still had pinch flats. Just because a tire is large doesn't mean that it is slow. Among others, Compass sells 700c x 30-40mm tires that roll pretty well on the road. If I had to pick one bike, it would be my gravel bike with fast ~40mm tires. Seems like a no-brainer to me. I'm not racing anyone.

UnfilteredDregs

Ha! They must of changed their language recently... Vaya at its roots is a touring bike.

NormanF

Its really an adventure bike. The Salsa Vaya is a cross-bred road bike that seeks to go into territory you could go only go before with a mountain bike. You can consider it a true all-terrain bike.

NormanF

A country bike or it do it all bike. They ripped off Grant Petersen's A. Homer Hilsen and added disk brakes.

UnfilteredDregs

Yeah! touring... I wonder why they discontinued the Ti frame and went with stainless... Nice bikes, yeah I'm biased.

NormanF

I think you'd want a dedicated touring bike. The Salsa Vaya is more of a sports touring bicycle, albeit with disk brakes.

Nice bike, though.