I found I loved gravel biking through Germany and Italy on my Cinelli Zydeco gravel bike but I hated the disc brakes. They just plain don't work as well as rim brakes despite lazy journalists repeating the marketing hype over and over until people believe it.
Since the disc brakes are so bad I had to find an alternative but it is not easy. The marketing world has converted everyone to road bike discs whether they want it or not. It is hard to find rim brake rims, rim brake hubs and rim brake forks.
I finally went to Davis Carver to see if he could build me a gravel frame with cantilever studs. He said sure. So I snagged the last new old stock Enve cantilever fork on the planet and waited for my frame. I like working with Davis because he does a great job of communication and he checks my requests for foolish mistakes. He also delivers incredibly fast by custom bike standards at just 90 days and his prices are very competitive.
The frame arrived as promised and I set it up with Hope RS4 rim brake hubs with a campy cassette in 135mm spacing. I laced them to HED Belgium plus rims and mounted Gravelking 700x50 tires. The frame had plenty of clearance for the tires but I had to get a number of examples of V Brakes to find a pair that had adequate clearance.
It rides beautifully. It feels road bike responsive on the road and is cushy comfy when I dive off the pavement. It fits me perfectly and it is fun to ride on the road but also on anything including mountain bike single track, to the point that you really need a suspension fork due to drop-offs.
So if you have not discovered gravel biking you owe yourself to find out what it is all about.
Davis Carver can be found at bikeman.com and he offers two different gravel bikes. The Asian made ALLROAD I purchased and an American made Gravel frame. I choose the Asian made offering because of the wide variety of options you can select, like my cantilever studs, the travel couplers and custom geometry.
