Ok, so I am new to Gravel and enjoying biking around some nice fire trails linked by some Mtb tracks near home.
I have slowly gained confidence on descent and am comfortable with a little drift into a gravely corner.
However, in corners with some softer sand the bike is twitchy and I am not sure what is happening. It is a Grizl with 50c Perrelli knobly tyres 24psi (Silca Tyre Calculator).
Is it possible the side wall is flexing and causing it to twitch?
Is the pressure too high for the terrain?
Is it my body position? (I am thinking this as I have never ridden drop handlebars off road before and I have been over the handle bars a few times)
Or is it just the geometry of the bike?
Any help is greatly appreciated.
by the-diver-dan
13 Comments
Could it be that the bike is sinking into the soft surface? That’s never particularly pleasant. And a 5cm tyre still isn’t a fatbike.
I think that’s basically what soft sand does to a bike isn’t it? I have the same issue with even my mountain bike and I’ve washed out a few times on my Grizl. It’s a bit easier to rescue yourself on a mountain bike compared to the gravel.
Unweight the bars, pedal hard, smooth and consistent and just stay upright, the bike will find it’s way.
Loose stuff is the worst.
Is mix of all of it. Watch some technique videos, adjust PSIs, and keep practicing. Every tire and bike will feel a bit different, but you get used to it quickly. I roll with the Hutchkinson Overide 50c and I use my gravel bike as a cross country bike pretty much, no the ideal tire but I ride accordingly/feeling the grip of the tire.
its the soft sand. you just get used to it. tons of that stuff in my area. for me instead of thinking of absolute traction with the front tire i think of it as the front tire is a ski and just floats around only in the general direction that i want it to go.
It’s a skill issue my dude
Heavy feet, light hands.
The bike is twitchy as you’re not letting the front wheel go where it wants to and then self correct.
Sounds like I have stumbled into a known gravel, MTB issue, SAND!
I would have thought it would behave a bit more predictably. It seemed to be that as l came in with some speed into the corner it would start to slide and then bite, and slide and bite! Unpleasant!
This is an experience thing.
Get your weight over your butt and don’t death grip the handlebars too much. This should shift your weight back and stop the front tyre digging in and becoming twitchy.
Practice some stuff like emergency stops and hanging your butt over the rear wheel a little bit on descents.
Basically get the weight off the handlebars.
pretty standard sand behavior. Just don’t stop pedaling and let the bike do bike things.
It could be your bike fit or your match between your bike fit and the geometry of that bike.
This bike doesn’t look like it has the rear wheel tucked in ultra aggressively, but the front wheel looks pretty far out there. Not always and issue but it can be for some.
Basically there are some things going on with the bike industry:
– They are still really in the mindset of designing around a middle of the bell curve moderately tall man, which is relatively short legs, long torso.
– They are mostly obsessed with shortening the chainstays as much as possible as they think it automatically means improved performance for everyone. Seems more marketing based than reality
– They view toe overlap as the worst possible thing that could happen
Because of this there is a lot of focus on designing bikes with as short chainstays as possible but pushing the front center out. This is OK if you’re the stereotypical medium height guy with shorter legs and a lot of torso. But if your not, it’s not.
If you have really long legs and especially long femurs, or have big feet, short chainstays and long front center shift you too far towards the rear wheel and cause a bunch of these handling issues. You can try and fix it by having a really aggressive handlebars setup to try and shift weight back to the front, but that’s very hard a lot of the time because the long legs/femurs/feet close your hip angle. Shorter cranks can help with this somewhat.
If your bike is like this it might be *really* sensitive to slight shifts in saddle setback, so maybe try that. If your saddle is excessively far back you want to get it forward. But it has to work for your fit.
Custom bikes are less common now but good builders get around this by lengthening the chainstays, bringing the front wheel back in, and then making sure you’re clueful enough not to crash from toe overlap. Toe overlap really isn’t as big a deal as so many think. They won’t do this for everyone, cause it’s not appropriate, but for some riders it will be, and that bike will handle vastly better for them than a stock one.
This is just food for though, there’s no way I could possibly say this is what’s going on. But when your bike fit is right *and* the wheels are located right the bike will get you setup to get nice predictable handling and give you the best options to float the front wheel over sand and loose stuff in an appropriate way.
Sand sucks, move your weight back to prevent the front wheel from digging in and hold on.