Upgrade choices - power or wheels

Equipment
1

Last couple of months I’ve taken a beating with overtime, which sucks for quality of life but does mean I’ve got about £500 extra in the toy fund.

Currently I have a Bianchi Aria rim brake bike with 33mm alloy wheels and a stages lh crank, my other bike is a Kinesis gravel adventure rig.

I’m toying between Garmin SPD pedals for lh power for some gravel races, winter training and bike packing OR some alloy braking tracked deeper wheels such as Campag Bullet 50. There’s plenty of 2nd hand wheels in budget since it’s older tech. I want alloy brake tracks as I live in a part of the world that’ll rain and sun at the drop of a hat.

Throw me some arguments either way as I’ve no one else to bounce ideas off!

2

Have you thought about a 4iii or something on your gravel bike (my mate is using one he got at a good price from ProBikeit on his Kinesis gravel bike) and that might leave you with money left over for wheels too?

3

Power Grx cranks in 170mm seem rarer than hen’s teeth right now! But I should actually ask my local shop, he’s part wizard when it comes to finding stuff.

1 Like
4

Power is first imho, unless you aren’t sure how to use it with outside rides and workouts.

4 Likes
5

Use power on the fast bike. This would be for the gravel adventures.

6

Power for sure.

7

Power.

8

If you are committed to keeping your bike, I would get a crank based power meter. The pedals are good if you are swapping pedals between bikes but are more expensive and, in my experience, have more issues than crank based power meters.

9

Competitive Cyclist shows a stages grx crank for 375

edit there’s a 20% code on their site that brings it down to 300. Good timing

10

Power it is! Competitive cyclist would be cool but not UK anymore.

Thanks all.

11

I just bought a Stages GRX 170 crank for $300. I was going back and forth of crank vs pedal based and couldn’t pass up that deal. Bought it directly from Stages with a coupon code and received it in just a couple days.

12

If you already have a powermeter on your road bike and you use that for training. I would spend the money on wheels. For me the gravel bike is just for fun and any work done on the TT bike/ road bike filters through to it and whilst it would be nice to know its not vital to me there and I rather spend the money on performance gains (wheels) for the TT/Road bikes which already have powermeters. That’s just my 2p though :+1:

13

Looks like both would be good (eventually!) so I think the smarter option is to message the LBS and see what he can do.

No point looking at power if nothing is in stock, wheels at least are easy he started off as only building wheels so they’re good ones.

14

Have to say, after being somewhat sceptical and sticking with stock wheels (Giant PR2’s over two bikes), I’m really surprised by the difference a wheelset upgrade has made.

fwiw I got dura ace C60’s with aluminium brake track second hand for similar money to new non-brand carbon (I was comparing with “Prime” wheelsets that Wiggle/ Chain Reaction sell).

I have 10 speed GRX on my gravel bike - I use a 105 4iiii on that, without noticing any issues.

15

Personally, I’d pass on older very narrow wheels. What are they? 15mm internal? I’d stick with at least 17-18mm internal.

2 Likes
17

Now I am just at my desk in the little home office waiting for the delivery man. An old work buddy now works at a large bike shop and sent me a large discount code so a Stage LH grx arm is heading my way.

Now all the z2 rides with my mates will count. Think I should start looking for some gravel events!

1 Like