I found what seems to be a nice bike from a local seller for $600. I really wanted a gravel bike but this seems to be a cyclocross bike with 38 tires. How different from a gravel bike would this actually be and is it worth $600 in good condition or would I be better off getting a gravel bike new? I'd probably be doing 80/20 road trail to start as a best guess.
by funkymonk44
13 Comments
Dunno the technical differences, but I ride a Cross Check as a primarily gravel bike and it’s great. “Gravel” is a new market segment, but not a new activity.
Looks like it will fit your needs.
Marketing 🤷🏻♂️
Gravel bikes tend to have the ability to carry more staff for bike packing. They also tend to have more relaxed frames for more comfort. The line is being blurred because now that there are “aggressive” gravel bikes for racing out there. If you are looking to bike pack this bike might not be ideal. If you want something a bit more relaxed, this bike might not be ideal. I don’t know much about that brand so it is unclear to me if the price is worth it.
Cyclocross has a specific set of rules from the UCI, including 33mm being the maximum tyre size. Gravel doesn’t.
There are other things that might be different because of the difference in their intended purposes (short, hard cx races Vs long distance adventures) but that’s not guaranteed.
Generally little to no bottle cage mounts, higher bottom bracket, lower head stack, and most likely smaller tire clearances.
Pure cx bikes are designed to be ridden for an hour , gravel bikes take comfort in mind for all day riding
For use in official races cyclocross frames only need to support 33mm tires for most categories (38mm for masters). Currently gravel has no width limit so the frames may go wider. That is under review and may get aligned to CX.
Otherwise some CX might have shorter frame geometry and steeper angles, etc to aid on the tight courses they have. If it is not a race spec bike you need, then no difference that matters.
If the fit is comfortable it is good to go.
As others have noted, necessarily there is no difference except very commonly cx bikes cannot take as large tires as most gravel bikes.
However, bikes actually designed for cyclocross often have less relaxed geometries since cyclocross always involves many tight turns on a relatively narrow course. Stability for long straight line efforts is less important.
Gravel bikes usually have me comfortable all-day position, more stable/lower BB, and bigger tire clearance.
Rode a CX bike for years as my gravel bike and then got a gravel bike and the difference is night and day.
For the most part Grævel is just like Cyclocross but for pussies. No mud, no winter temps, comfy tires and posture, slower and more time to finish. /s
This bike already pretty much looks like grævel to me. Slack seatpost, fairly reasonable steering angle. The reach is a bit long, but that is also a feature of the long stem. It looks like the owner flipped the stem to allow a higher stack height, which makes this very grævel alike. Those are also definitely not cyclocross tires as you would die in a muddy cx race without knobs. But they are perfect for tarmac and dry compacted grævl.
The good part about Cyclocross is that they often prefer simple sometimes old school tech that is robust and easily servicable. You got a steel frame, external cable routing, QR-skewers, 5arm crank etc. which personally i think are really great to have.
Gravelbikes are definitely more trendy, which often leads to newer tech being adopted which is often more proprietary and difficult to service.
tire clearance and frame geometry.
Tighter geometry on CX bikes, more generous tire clearance on gravel bikes, that’s about it, I’d say. CX bikes predated the Gravel era, so I expect you’re likely to find more CX bikes are equipped with rim brakes.
Marketing. There’s no clear line from a design perspective.