I want to build a titanium gravel bike

I am Tibor from Hungary and I want to build a titanium gravel bike from scratch.

Full disclosure: I am full amateur, I am not a bike mechanic and I am not a pro cyclist

I have never built a bike before. And I am 55.

So, I am intimidated by my own idea.

Chances are that I will make mistakes and embarrass myself a few times during doing this. But I hope I will not mess it up very badly.

I do not have anything of the new bike at the moment. Neither the frame nor the components.

And this is going to be the story of this whole thing the frame, the components, the tools and the building the bike itself.

A bit of history…

I started or rather restarted riding 10 years ago. Prior to that I rode some bicycles as a kid and during the college years I rode from Budapest to Paris on a drop bar bicycle and almost back - had an accident on the way back. We used paper maps at that time It was so long time ago…

I also did some mountain biking here and there but not much…

And then - as adult life took over everything - I had not been riding at all for a long-long time…

Then 10 years ago I bought a flat bar fitness bike and it started to escalate… 🙂

Friends told me that I had to have a drop bar and combined brake-shift-lever. So I got a proper aluminium road bike. And I really got into it.

Then I managed to develop a herniated disc. Maybe due to stress, or whatever. I intentionally exluded riding from the possible causes…

Had couple of bad weeks, maybe months, laying on the ground, flipping through the pages of Mountain High Europe’s Greatest Climbs. Paperbased, oldschool.

I figured Stelvio might be something to work for.

And finally, I was getting slowly back on the bike, no surgery was needed.

And I’ve ridden Stelvio with my eldest son. Rest of the family provided refreshment on the way up. It was fun.

I trained a lot for that. The bike was the dropbar alu framed Merida with rim brake. Sold it since then…

Why gravel

I ride mostly on paved roads.

Roads are not amazing here in Hungary - the least to say. And I was - and still am - worried about my lower back.

And I thought I had to upgrade to a carbon frame. And because of my lower back I wanted something comfortable with some kind of “shock absorbing” or damping and wider tires.

So, that was the official reasoning for the carbon gravel bike.

I was eying Trek and Specialized and ended up buying A Specialized Diverge.

This is great. I like it. Fell with it once, got hit by a car once and had to get a replacement of the Future Shock absorbing steering thingy.

Overall I did not have any problem with it.

Still no problem, but it is time for a change.

And I figured that I wanted to build it myself. Remember? No experience with that.

And this story will be about that.

I will tell you about the frame.

And I will share my struggle regarding the components. Because…

The Questions are…

What bottom bracket?
What groupset?
Electronic or Mechanical?
1 times or 2 times?
What wheels?
What bar?
What stem - with damping/suspension??
What seatpost - with what damping??
Tires?
And all that jazz…
And even what tools will I need

And will I need help - no, not opinions - you know the saying:

“Opinions are like farts: everyone has them, no one wants to hear anyone else's ”

I want to hear your real life experiences. With electronic shifting, with bottom brackets, whatever, and your story of how you screwed up with choosing one solution instead of the other. How you were swearing when your electronic shifting stopped responding in the middle of nowhere. Or how your top grade bottom bracket was making you crazy with that noise.

Or how unearthly happy you became choosing that ridiculously expensive thingy that even your wife did not know about, And that still was worth every penny after she found out about.

See, my decisions are not going to be based on science, but rather feelings.

Hence I’m interested in your feelings - surely about riding as a whole but now about the various components.

Tell me about your feelings. How did that feel? Do you want to talk about that?

So, this is what this going to be all about.

Selecting the components, the tools and then building the bike.

This is not retrospective. This is a live process.

Stay with me and stay tuned.