Endurance geometry or gravel frame good for short women 32/34mm clearance

[jean]

Hi all,

I have a carbonda cfr696 as my gravel bike and a elves vanyar pro as my road bike. I now plan to get a bike for my wife. She is 160cm tall.
Requirements/would be nice are:
- women specific geometry
- with bikepacking mount points (top tube, pannier, fenders, fork not necessary)
- tire clearance for at least 32/34, perhaps a full gravel bike but also road endurance with higher clearance
- basically if she puts 30/32mm tires she can have a nice endurance road bike and if she puts bigger tires she can have a gravel bike

I was looking at the Liv Avail AR 1 if I was going mainstream brand, otherwise I was kooing at:
- Velobuild GF-003
- Carbonda 696 or 707 (although non women geometry)
- Elves Avari Pro (road oriented and max tire of 30mm unforunately)

Can you help me out?

[Pedaldancer]

If you look on carbonda, why are you not looking on the 505?
It would probably fit in the smallest size quite nice.

However define "women specific"?
To me that means at first that the components have specific size, e.g. the adapted to the narrow shoulders. Crankset length , gear ratio...

The frame itself doesn't have to be "women" .. as long as the geometry fits the needs.

There is also tantan offering some Gravel frames which go very low in the size.

[klindsey00]

However define "women specific"?
To me that means at first that the components have specific size, e.g. the adapted to the narrow shoulders. Crankset length , gear ratio...

The frame itself doesn't have to be "women" .. as long as the geometry fits the needs.

Right, Geometry is geometry... and components that are better suited for women are like you said narrow bars, short cranks. The only thing that makes Liv frames women specific is paint
Lower BBs/ standover height usually gives more confidence for women as well.

If you could give a stack/reach or Top tube figures you are looking for to make the search better?

I was looking at the Liv Avail AR 1
-

Handlebars are too wide, 38 in the smallest size is wider than most womens shoulders, crank lengths are also pretty long as women would benefit from even smaller than 165s tbh.

[Blueberry]

Speaking as a woman, "women's specific geometry" for a bike frame is kind of a gimmick and you can end up getting suckered into paying the Pink Tax. The variation between shapes of women is waaaay too extreme for women's specific geometry to have any meaning. Same is true for men, they are not shaped the same, there is no men's specific frame geo and a bike that does not specify gender is not a default men's bike.

If you want a bike that really fits perfectly, you have to know what shape you are specifically, your mobility, and how that translates to bike geometry. A bike fitter could certainly help with all that. This information is most relevant if you are looking for a more aggressive race-like or super peak performance fit. If you just want a comfortable bike, go for something with a bigger stack/reach (maybe 1.45+). More relaxed geometry is more likely to comfortably fit a wider range of people. Unless your wife is really planning to shred some gnar on this bike, you don't need to worry too much about perfectly optimized geometry. If she is planning to do some gnar shredding, it's very worth getting a bike fit before buying anything.

Personally, I love my aluminum Salsa Journeyer, it's super relaxed and can fit MTB tires (not sure what their availability is like outside the US). On the 53cm, the stack is 552mm and reach is 372mm so stack/reach is 1.48, very upright. I've got one set of wheels with 40c slick tires that I use for errands/around town biking and another wheelset with 2.2 MTB tires if I want to hit the trails. It's definitely much more off-road oriented though. I'm spoiled with several bikes so I have other bikes specifically for road.

On the more-roadie side, I love my Triaero/ICAN Flyee bike. It fits 35c with plenty of clearance. I've (semi-accidentally) taken it on trails before and it got the job done. Those 40c wheels with the blue tires in the Salsa photo also fit on the Flyee but the clearance is definitely tight (only 3-4mm in some spots). ICAN will do a custom paint job for free if it's not too complicated too.

It looks like you can get an aluminum Endurace with Tiagra from Canyon for 1600USD and I've heard of people fitting 40c tires on those. Their geo is very relaxed too.

[Pedaldancer]

Right, Geometry is geometry... and components that are better suited for women are like you said narrow bars, short cranks. The only thing that makes Liv frames women specific is paint
Lower BBs/ standover height usually gives more confidence for women as well.

If you could give a stack/reach or Top tube figures you are looking for to make the search better?

Handlebars are too wide, 38 in the smallest size is wider than most womens shoulders, crank lengths are also pretty long as women would benefit from even smaller than 165s tbh.

Well.. maybe you should compare the Liv frames closely with the Giant pendants.  They may look identic, but for geometry they are different. E.g. compare the TCR with the Liv "sister " model Langma. They are not the same.

Don't know if this was always the case (I have the faint memory that some years ago Liv was only having the same frames with different components).
 Handlebar width below 38 is still difficult to find.
Personally my shoulder width is measured 37cm, I appear to be very narrow on the upper body.. well I can't change my bone structure ...
. For Gravel&Endurance i chose 380mm , for my bit more aggressive road bike i picked 360mm
.
This 20mm change a lot in the riding impression.
If s complete bike is perfect besides the handlebar width.... I'd go for it and just exchange this one part
 If you start to exchange a lot of stuff,  a complete bike is not sich a great choice.

[klindsey00]

right, Bone structure can't be changed, most women do not measure wider than 38cm at the shoulders, so why are all but the widest size larger than 38?

Sure the geometry is different but that doesn't make is specific to men/women, It all depends on your proportions on how you fit a bike. I'm 194cm tall and am riding 38cm bars

https://hupcc.com/products/hup-32cm-compact-drop-handlebars-kids-road-race-cyclocross-bikes?variant=40481381646383

here are some narrow bars.

[Pedaldancer]

right, Bone structure can't be changed, most women do not measure wider than 38cm at the shoulders, so why are all but the widest size larger than 38?

Sure the geometry is different but that doesn't make is specific to men/women, It all depends on your proportions on how you fit a bike. I'm 194cm tall and am riding 38cm bars

https://hupcc.com/products/hup-32cm-compact-drop-handlebars-kids-road-race-cyclocross-bikes?variant=40481381646383

here are some narrow bars.

You don't want to tell me your shoulders are 38 at that size...? And sorry, it's okay that you do it, but that's definitely not the mainstream choice.

You do not think the Liv avail is specific?  The avail aims to be a Gravel light.... and this adds wide handle bars. I don't understand this style either,  but some people (a lot frankly) like it.  And if you go for similar unisex bikes that gets worse with even wider handlebars.

If you check out the race bikes you may see that this is indeed adjusted starting with 360mm handlebars in the small sizes.  This is absolutely not common for men's bikes. Also the size range extends to smaller body sizes...
Nobody tells you to buy a Liv. But facts are facts.

It'll be nice to see a statistic about body measurements... from my perspective most women indeed have a broader bone structure in the upper chest than me. Even if they are a smaller.

[MartinCZ]

Hi, I am going use this thread to ask for help too.

I am looking for a road/gravel frameset for my wife. Something with relaxed "fitness" geometry. She previously had a Canyon ROADLITE but it was too much and we sold it.

I was looking at LIV Thrive Advanced for example but in our region Giant sells just ALU versions of this bike and I prefer carbon and ideally, I’d like to buy just the frameset so I will build the bike on my own. It seems impossible to purchase just the carbon frameset from Giant...

Could someone experienced point me to similar frameset? Preferably with around 35 - 40 mm tyre clearance, external cable routing (I will use flat handlebar), threaded BB etc. I was not able to find anything. Fitness bikes are probably not the target for most of the producers in China.

[Pedaldancer]

Hi, I am going use this thread to ask for help too.

I am looking for a road/gravel frameset for my wife. Something with relaxed "fitness" geometry. She previously had a Canyon ROADLITE but it was too much and we sold it.

I was looking at LIV Thrive Advanced for example but in our region Giant sells just ALU versions of this bike and I prefer carbon and ideally, I’d like to buy just the frameset so I will build the bike on my own. It seems impossible to purchase just the carbon frameset from Giant...

Could someone experienced point me to similar frameset? Preferably with around 35 - 40 mm tyre clearance, external cable routing (I will use flat handlebar), threaded BB etc. I was not able to find anything. Fitness bikes are probably not the target for most of the producers in China.

You can use a Gravel/ Allroad frame and build it as flat bar. If ", to much" means to long, this should help to bring it into the correct direction.
Usually you would not take a road frame and equip it with a flat bar,  but there are some use cases where it can work . To compensate the shorter frame you may use a longer stem.

I have seen some Carbonda 707 flat bar builds, which came out very nicely as the 707 is a very long frame, so the conversion to flatbar worked very nicely.

Converting a flat bar bike into road usually fails, as the frames are very often too long and riding a super short stem is not a super nice feeling.