small budget Gravel bikes

[ade towell]

Ha thanks that’s some impressively thorough information and is what confused me when I’m was looking at the CdF a few years ago

 

[wafter]

Ha thanks that’s some impressively thorough information and is what confused me when I’m was looking at the CdF a few years ago

No worries and yes; I had the same issue when looking in 2020 so I trawled the net for info and a spreadsheet was born

Happy (well, mostly) with the outcome

 

[ade towell]

Ah yes I recognise the bike - didn’t you create a highly detailed thread about it?

Just to bookend and maybe help the OP, this is the titanium Kinesis Tripster I got used for £850 (with hydraulic brakes)

 

[wafter]

Ah yes I recognise the bike - didn’t you create a highly detailed thread about it?

Just to bookend and maybe help the OP, this is the titanium Kinesis Tripster I got used for £850 (with hydraulic brakes)
View attachment 763874

Yup, I might have gone full-OCD on that one..

Looks like a decent buy - if you can tolerate the placcy fork

 

[StuAff]

Ah yes I recognise the bike - didn’t you create a highly detailed thread about it?

Just to bookend and maybe help the OP, this is the titanium Kinesis Tripster I got used for £850 (with hydraulic brakes)
View attachment 763874

£850 is a ridiculously good bargain. There's a V3 with GRX for twice that price on eBay at the moment (same price I paid for my frameset, though that was new).

 

[ade towell]

Ha touché, my mates dad is a full on ‘steel is real’ type - gives me stick for the fork - am very happy with a lighter bike that I don’t have to worry about scratching, repainting, rust etc, carbon fork seems fine to me - if I wanted to carry stuff on the front fork then steel would definitely be preferable although I think Kinesis now do the Tripster with carbon fork with luggage carrying capabilities.
To be fair it got me around the King Alfreds Way off road route fully loaded for wild camping, with luggage also on the front bars and it didn’t flinch. Definitely feel confident this bike can handle anything I’m ever capable of throwing at it

Yup, I might have gone full-OCD on that one..

Looks like a decent buy - if you can tolerate the placcy fork

 

[ade towell]

£850 is a ridiculously good bargain. There's a V3 with GRX for twice that price on eBay at the moment (same price I paid for my frameset, though that was new).

Yes this is the original V1 Tripster one of the first adventure / gravel type bikes - still a fantastically comfortable and versatile bike to ride, though am sure there are improvements in the last 2 iterations. This is GRX 2x10 with tiagra hydraulic brakes

 

[StuAff]

Yes this is the original V1 Tripster one of the first adventure / gravel type bikes - still a fantastically comfortable and versatile bike to ride, though am sure there are improvements in the last 2 iterations. This is GRX 2x10 with tiagra hydraulic brakes

Rather than a V1 I got one of the other pioneer bikes, a Litespeed T5G (nicked 2022 hence the V3). Compared to the V1: through axles front and back, bigger tyre clearance (officially 700x45 without guards), revised geometry (longer reach, with less toe overlap, plus longer wheelbase, and sloping top tubes on smaller sizes), revised frame design for greater compliance and load-bearing strength, internal cable routing, triple bottle cage bosses (allowing lower positions and clearance for a frame bag), cage mounts on the (stiffer) fork, and the rather fab blue anodized Kinesis logo on the down tube. Mine's purely for road & the odd dubious Sustrans path, running 105 R7000.

 

[ade towell]

Rather than a V1 I got one of the other pioneer bikes, a Litespeed T5G (nicked 2022 hence the V3). Compared to the V1: through axles front and back, bigger tyre clearance (officially 700x45 without guards), revised geometry (longer reach, with less toe overlap, plus longer wheelbase, and sloping top tubes on smaller sizes), revised frame design for greater compliance and load-bearing strength, internal cable routing, triple bottle cage bosses (allowing lower positions and clearance for a frame bag), cage mounts on the (stiffer) fork, and the rather fab blue anodized Kinesis logo on the down tube. Mine's purely for road & the odd dubious Sustrans path, running 105 R7000.

Ha Kinesis must be very conservative on their tyre clearance because in that photo I posted I’ve got 43mm tyres on and on top of those I now have the rather lovely Kinesis Fend off metal guards that I forgot to mention came as part of the £850 deal.
It’s a snug fit and wouldn’t want to go through a lot of muddy off road stuff but for winter riding they’ve been great.
Litespeed is titanium too isn’t it?

 

[StuAff]

Ha Kinesis must be very conservative on their tyre clearance because in that photo I posted I’ve got 43mm tyres on and on top of those I now have the rather lovely Kinesis Fend off metal guards that I forgot to mention came as part of the £850 deal.
It’s a snug fit and wouldn’t want to go through a lot of muddy off road stuff but for winter riding they’ve been great.
Litespeed is titanium too isn’t it?

Yup, officially the v1 had 700x40 clearance- Dave Atkinson of road.cc had 42mms on it and reckoned it could take 45mms. Makers' figures are always conservative, allowing for mud clearance and variations in tyre sizes. Litespeed are (US-made) titanium specialists- they did (far eastern manufactured) carbon for a while, but those have been spun off into Obed, a separate brand.

 

[wafter]

Ha touché, my mates dad is a full on ‘steel is real’ type - gives me stick for the fork - am very happy with a lighter bike that I don’t have to worry about scratching, repainting, rust etc, carbon fork seems fine to me - if I wanted to carry stuff on the front fork then steel would definitely be preferable although I think Kinesis now do the Tripster with carbon fork with luggage carrying capabilities.
To be fair it got me around the King Alfreds Way off road route fully loaded for wild camping, with luggage also on the front bars and it didn’t flinch. Definitely feel confident this bike can handle anything I’m ever capable of throwing at it

That's fair enough; a with everything in life it has two sides. While I can completely appreciate the pratical benefits in use of composities, in my anxious head these are undermined by their reduced predictability, difficulty of inspection and more catastrophic failure modes...

I'm sure many people ride composite gear daily with no issues but I'm too cautious to be one of them