Building Your Own Gravel/Adventure Bike

Cyclists, adventure racer and regular reader of this blog Chuck Vohsen has undertaken an interesting project that will most certainly capture the imagination of other readers as well. He has started building his own "Gravel Bike" that is specifically designed to be ridden on unpaved roads. Chuck hates pavement. Trust me! He has also been documenting his progress through his blog with three detailed "how-to" posts already online. Those posts are very informative and will be of interest to others who would be interested in building a similar bike of their own.

At the beginning of Part 1 of this series Chuck explains exactly why he has embarked on this project. First and foremost, he mentions that there are several good gravel road races coming up soon and that he also has plenty of gravel roads near his house that would be fun to ride. He also mentions that he stopped actually buying bikes a few years back in favor of building his own, which is both fun and cost effective. Best of all, and I agree with this statement, Chuck says "nobody can have just two bikes." Spoken like a true cyclist. 

In that first post Chuck talks about his plans for his new creation as well as the parts he intends to use. He also shares some secrets for scoring those parts on the cheap using Ebay and Craigslist for example. Part 2 of the series goes into more detail on why he chose specific parts and gets down to the nitty gritty of starting to assemble those pieces into a working bicycle. Lots of photos help to illustrate the process for anyone following along at home. 

Part 3 greatly expands on the assembly process as more parts arrive at Casa Vohsen. So far Chuck is mostly concentrating on putting the frame together at this point, and while it vaguely looks like a bike, we'll have to wait for more parts to arrive before things really start to fill in. That will happen in future blog posts.

I know there are a lot of readers, like me, who enjoy riding. Doesn't matter if its on a road, a trail or track, as long as we're on a bike we'll enjoy it. Those cyclists will probably get a kick out of following along with Chuck's project which is just now starting to take shape. Some of you may even want to follow his lead and build a similar bike of your own. 

This is great stuff for the gear heads.