Most of my rides are short lunchtime rides from my house, so I need to be able to go quickly. I have road and mountain supplies in my Camelbak so I don't have to move anything around based on what I'm going to ride. My riding time is limited, but it's easier to find 15 to 30 min in the evening for maintenance, so I make sure everything is ready to go ahead of time.

Anyone have any experience with Gorilla Brake pads? I'm looking to for new pads for my mountain, road, and gravel bikes, and their pricing is good. Only catch is the flat rate shipping to the US, so I'd need to order a few pairs for it to make sense. I've been running Shimano organic pads and the performance is good for how I ride.

Any other recommendations for inexpensive but good pads?

@janmeyer Can you share your body mesurments? length and inseam?
I'm struggling on deciding which size i need, i'm 193cm with an 93cm inseam, when i compare this frame with my other (road)bikes it's long in reach. To get a comparable reach im in between L an XL.

I'm about 188 with an 89 cm inseam. You can't directly compare the reach of this frame to a typical road bike. Like many of the newer gravel bikes, the 707 was designed with a longer front center for stability on rough terrain, and you compensate by running a shorter stem. An XL 707 with an 80mm stem gives me about the same handlebar position as my L Canyon Endurace with a 110mm stem. However, the front wheel will be about 40mm farther forward on the 707, so it should be more stable on the technical descents. (And there will be more toe clearance, even with fat tires.)

The XL 707 is very close in measurements to the L Canyon Grizl. That bike comes with an 80mm stem and has essentially the same handlebar position (Reach+ and Stack+ in canyon terms) as the L Endurace.

I'm going to build it with Shimano GRX 2x (mechanical). No shocks or dropper post, although I do want to get a Redshift ShockStop stem once I have my fit dialed in. I plan on having two sets of wheels, one for mixed road/gravel and another for rougher trails.

For those of you who have painted your own frames, what primer, paint, and clear coat do you recommend? I'm looking for something that will be durable and comes in a decent selection of colors, and I will be using spray cans as I don't have a spray gun.

Anyone have any experience with Montana Cans?

Hello,
I'm Jann from San Diego!

I cam across this forum when researching frame options for my gravel bike build. I'm leaning pretty heavily towards the Carbonda CFR707 at this point, although I like the CFR696 as well.

There's a wealth of great information here. Thanks everyone for sharing your experiences!