Where in VT are you? I’m in Central VT, do most of my riding in Washington Country or the NEK, and just recently worked through the exact same dilemma. I ended up getting a Giant Revolt Advanced Pro frameset and building it up with a mullet setup (40T chainrining, 10-50 cassette). As others have said, it was down to the Lauf Seigla, Fezzari Shafer, or the Giant. I went with the Giant largely because of the flexibility and availability. The other two seem to be great bikes, but I really liked the option of running either 1x or 2x with a ton of clearance. In terms of drivetrain and clearance, it seems like you can do 700x45c with a SRAM 2x wide, 700x50c with Shimano GRX, and the frame is the only limiter for 1x.
I mostly based my decision on being able to ride very chunky gravel and Class IV roads with the best combination of speed, handling, and comfort. I’m 6’1" and just felt better navigating unstable terrain on 700c wheels than I did on 650B wheels. As others have mentioned, I’d go with something that could handle 700x45c at the very least, but having the option to run 700x50c really opens things up.
I’ll be running two wheelsets on my Revolt, depending on what and where I’ll be riding: one with a pair of 700x50c Maxxis Ramblers for chunky stuff, the other with a pair of 700x45c Pirelli Cinturato Gravel Hs for faster rides.
Open UP fits 42s on 700c and 2.1 on 650b pretty well.
However, for bigger 700c, the clearance is just too small. Even the Open wide has trouble fitting a tall 45c, that gets really really close to the seat stay.
I have a 2022 Checkpoint SLR. With the 25 id rims my 40mm file tread tires measure almost 43mm. Love this bike and I’ve taken it on everything from road, smooth gravel to single track. Also performs well in the sloppy gravel and wet trails.
If you were happy with your previous Checkpoint i’d strongly consider the new one.
Gotcha. Basically, it’ll be 700x50c for mud season and chunky riding (Muddy Onion, Rasputitsa, VT Overland) then the 700x45c for faster events with minimal or no Class IV roads like Raid Lamoille, The Ranger, and some other things I may end up doing, as well as general riding when it’s dry out.
I have the Wi.de. I think the geometry puts limits on the tire/wheel diameter but that is also what makes the Open bikes so versatile. I have three wheelsets - a 700c/40mm fast gravel, 700c/32mm road and a 650b 47mm/2.1" for rough gravel/trails/fun. All work well and with the 32s the bike is really nice on the road.
This is a great discussion, I think a lot of people misinterpret the marketing of wide tires and their effect on geometry. The thing that seems often neglected is that a frame may “fit” a wide tire, but you have to ask what wheel circumference is it truly designed for? If you go too far outside of that range, all kinds of weird things happen, as mentioned above. Specifically with big 700c tires, you are likely to get bad toe overlap on many frames.
I posted these links from Dan Empfield at Slowtwitch talking about this issue, I think he does a pretty good job describing and specific to the Open UP & Wide frames. For what it’s worth, I’m in Northern California and our gravel is very rough around here also. Very few roads that look like the picture above, that actually looks better than a lot of our pavement!
Michelin Power Road tubeless. I wanted 35s - maybe Pirelli Cinturato Velos - but a year ago tires were hard to find. I found the Michelin’s in 32 and went with those. I’ve had a couple of punctures but nothing that Stan’s didn’t seal up right away. I only know because I found sealant on the frame after getting back home.
I don’t have tonne more to offer to what’s already been said, but I do have a lot of experience experimenting with different tire sizes and different wheel sizes. I’ll reiterate that shoving a big 700 45-55mm tire into a frame may fit, but unless the bike was designed around that size, then handling will likely suffer.
I’ve been messing with drop bar fat tire bikes for 10-12 years, and it really comes down to the bike’s geo matching the tire/wheel size for most of your intended use.
I had a custom steel bike made with road geo and optimized with 700 35mm tires, so if putting 45mm 700 tires on really messes with the handling and makes it annoying to ride. On the other hand, 650x48mm tires feel quite balanced. My bike was built mainly for light trail to pavement riding, and I switch wheels/tires appropriately with good results.
I have an OPEN UPPER with the same geometry and clearance. The OPEN UP takes up to 40mm tires on 700mm, but if you want to go wider it takes up to 2.1 on 650 rims.
I think the OP is asking about what gravel bikes he should consider that will allow for more than 40mm tires on a 700 wheel.
A Giant Revolt (to pick one of the models mentioned above) that the OEM says can fit 50mm tires presumably is designed to be able to fit 50mm tires, and has acceptable handling with this tire size as a result.
I’ve ridden my Diverge with 38-45mm tires and have not noticed any difference in handling between the tire sizes.
Yes, so you have to look at trail and fork offset, and also head tube angle to figure it out on your own. Otherwise you could use geometrygeeks website to compare bikes against others, such as the Diverge, that seem to be designed around a 700x42-ish sized tire. It makes sense that it handles similarly with the tire sizes you mention. Other bikes that come to mind are the Cannondale gravel bikes and the Canyon Grizl. Their geometries all seem to be centered around a larger tire size vs. an Open or a Cervelo Aspero, which is what I have. I think that math corresponds to a wheel radius of 345mm for the Aspero/UP vs. 355mm or more like the other bikes, which is similar to what Dan says in the first article linked above.
This is kind of what I was getting at - you need to know where and how you want to ride the bike before looking at tire sizes. Also picking on the Revolt, from experience, I’d hate that bike with 700x50mm tires. It has 440mm chainstays and 72mm of trail. This would be OK for me in pretty narrow use-cases. Heck, my fatbike with 5 inch tires have shorter stays (which is why it is designed around 26 inch rims).
Which model Revolt are you taking about? The 2022 Revolt Advanced (with the flip chip) has chainstays of 425 or 435 and in size L has either 65 or 68mm of trail. Genuinely curious here, since it handled fine (for me) when I test rode it with a 700x48c tire.
Yes… this is what I was wondering. Because for now I’ll only have one wheelset.
So I’m hoping that If manufacturer says the bike can handle a 45 mm tire that it won’t affect the handling too badly
Another point to consider (there are too many!) is that the effect on handling with the larger tires may or may not be preferred. In my opinion those large 700c tires with the change in geometry causing slower handling might be nice for going fast on smooth-ish gravel because the bike will be less twitchy. I think this is why you see a lot of gravel racing done on the larger tires. On the other hand, they make it tough to maneuver on narrow singletrack or technical rocky gravel. That is where the 650b size shines, you get bigger tires and quicker steering due to the smaller radius.
