Plainsman

For those who ride both, is your gravel bike setup the same or less aggressive than your road bike? Wondering if most have 1cm less effective reach to the hoods, 2cm, etc, or exactly the same as your road setup? Same question for effective height to top of bar. TIA!

base2 

Fit is fit. There really shouldn't be much of a difference that is not attributable to comfort.

What you will often see is wider bars. The way to do that with the same arms & torso you use on your other road bikes is to bring the bars closer to the shoulder joint in some fashion.

The wider bars are to afford more leverage over the additional flop caused by generally slacker head tube angles.

dsaul

If you want to do anything more than flat smooth dirt roads, I find that 20mm higher and 20mm shorter reach make for more confidence inspiring handling in an off road environment. Specifically, singletrack trails and rough downhill segments. If I weren't going so much faster, I'd ask all those people I pass on the rough downhills how that "road fit" is working out for them.

Steve B.

My gravels h-bar is set about an inch higher than my carbon road. Reach is the same and I actually just put the same bar on my carbon, an FSA Adventure bar in 46cm width. I really like this bar.

Plainsman

Well dsaul, from a re-assurance standpoint, I like that answer. I have a Giant Defy road bike, size L, which is a perfect fit (at max seat post insert, so I'm top of range). My new gravel bike is a Giant Revolt - also size Large. As setup, it is almost exactly 20mm short in each direction as you stated. An XL Revolt would have matched my road reach (which is not relaxed) exactly. I found myself questioning whether I should have gone up a size on the Revolt, but I've heard a little more upright on gravel could help with center of gravity on rough patches. What you describe seems to align exactly with how Giant is sizing their bikes.

mstateglfr 

My stack and reach numbers are about the same between my main road bike and gravel bike. I do have the bars of my gravel bike up a touch, like 1cm. I thought they were the same setup for a long time though, so its clearly not much of a difference.

Barrettscv 

My road bike and gravel bike set-up is the same. Both follow the French Fit philosophy of having a long reach and a moderate drop from the saddle to the handle bars.

chas58

My reach is shorter (and stack is shorter too) than what I've always had before.

Realistically, I want my reach to be such that I am not putting weight on my hands. Stand up straight, then crouch down with your hands in front of you. That is your reach.

With this shorter reach, I find I'm much, much more comfortable on gravel roads. I have a super stiff front end, yet have comfortably gone down some horrid washboard (on 32mm tires) because I just don't have much weight on my arms.

Rolla

Road bike has slightly longer reach and lower stack and narrower bars with no sweep.

msu2001la

I use the same identical fit measurements on all of my drop-bar bikes. Road, gravel, cx. Same saddles and pedals too.

Plainsman

Thanks. I just remeasured. My reach To the hoods is more like 10mm - 13mm shorter and right at 20mm higher. I don’t consider my road position to be relaxed at all (about 11cm saddle to bar drop), so it sounds like my gravel fit is right around where it should be.

cyclezen

my 'effective' reach is measured from where my sitzbones are on the saddle to the bar top - 'road' reach = 79.5 cm, gravel bike reach = 74 cm
my 'effective' stack measured from BB horizontal to Top of Bar (NOT top of Headtube) - road stack = 61.5 cm, gravel stack = 69 cm
I'm 177cm Tall (5' 9.5"), v-short torso, 183 cm wingspan (6' )
ride road with significant forward lean and elbow bend
ride Gravel like MTB... don;t really have much 'gravel' road, most everything for gravel around here would also be 'MTB-Lite' to 'Med'...
don;t really 'Drive' anything over 20 min to ride Gravel or MTB.
Ride On Yuri

Polaris OBark

If you compare the Trek Domane (endurance road bike) to their Checkpoint gravel bike, the reach on the gravel bike is much longer. I think their reasoning is longer frame, shorter stem and wider bars, as with modern mountain bikes.

I thought this was an industry-wide trend.

Plainsman

I think you are right. I guess I should have been more specific. My road bike and gravel bike are both the same brand and the same size (L). By the stack and reach charts the gravel bike is longer and taller. I’m thinking more of the effective reach to the hoods. With a shorter stem and gravel bars that reach comes out shorter than my road bike.

Zizkov

I don't know if the trend is industry wide. But my gravel definitely has a less aggressive geometry than my road bikes.
And that's just the way I want it since I use the gravel mainly for bikepackning.

Chilepines

The OP asked about EFFECTIVE reach - which usually means to the bars. Otherwise reach is horizontal distance from BB to top of the head tube - which is what some other posts were referring to. FWIW my new custom steel gravel bike has the same effective reach as my road bike but gets there with a longer frame reach and shorter stem. A big part of the reason I went custom is to get those measures (and others like head tube angle and BB drop) the way I wanted them.

Moisture

I would go slightly less overall reach and slightly lower bar drop on a bike dedicated to tarmac. the difference would be pretty marginal when attributing that my gravel grinder will have somewhat wider bars.

redlude97

My gravel bike is set up for the flared drops(cowchippers) to be about the same as my hoods position on my road bike. This makes my hoods around 1cm higher and about 15mm shorter compared to my road setup. I use the hoods ~50% of the time on the gravel bike whereas on the road i'm on the hoods 90% of the time