OPENING UP about my gravel bike journey

 “Getting the green light to build my dream bike wasn't all I imagined it would be.”  

I have always been more of a forager, building up bikes from other people's discards, as my reintroduction to cycling came at the same time as our first mortgage and a young family, about 35 years ago. Spending money on myself has always been hard. The stress of picking each and every component without boundaries was really getting to me and I could see my financier getting annoyed at the time I was spending on research.  

I had been initially talking to Dimitry at Triton about a custom Ti frame when I ended up chatting to Kashi Leuchs at Black Seal, the local importer for OPEN. I was Kashi's webmaster back in the day when he rode with Cadel Evans, Tinker Juarez and Christoph Sauser on the Volvo Cannondale team. This was my only source of fruity parts way back then; contra deals with Kashi. He offered me his demonstrator OPEN UP for a good price and my problem was solved or was it.... 

Outside the gun emplacements at Waimapihi

There were some issues. I wasn't a fan of many of the features that modern bikes come with out of the box. Internal cable routing, 1x, press fit BBs and sram hydro were all things I had managed to avoid up until then, or had bad experiences with previously. 

The first thing I did was to locate some left-hand shifter internals to turn it into a 2x. The good news is that Sram cable shifters are incredibly easy to work on, assuming you can source the replacement parts. A friend of a friend found some for me in Australia luckily. I replaced the rear 1x derailleur with a WiFli Force 2x variant, a road-link, an 11-42 cassette, and a 46/34 chain-ring combo on the front. Ideally an early model 10 speed exact actuation mtb derailleur from sram would have been great but the cable exit port position for the OPEN wasn't compatible. This was pretty common at the time, but I see a lot of the more recently designed bikes that support cable shifting have the cables exiting mid chain-stay rather than from the very endpoint of the frame which really “opens up” derailleur choice… 

Cheeky Quail photobombing at Waimapihi

Unfortunately, my next problem was chain derailment which happened a lot with the kind of riding I was doing, mostly trail riding, Cyclocross and some bikepacking. I got hooked on bikepacking in 2010 when Simon Kennett introduced the concept to Aotearoa after he did the 2008 Great Divide. I have only bikepacked on the OPEN UP a handful of times, two of them on the 800 km plus Renegades Muster, but I wanted the OPEN to be bikepacking capable if the course suited. The 2x set-up wasn't giving me low enough gearing on the steepest parts unfortunately the first time I did it. Common sense at this point would have been to go straight to Shimano GRX for the only clutched 2x system available at the time, but I was still persevering with the Sram ecosystem, and trying not to blow more money. 

 Ratio-technology from the UK had started building 12 speed upgrade kits for cable Sram shifters when it became obvious that Sram were not going to support the 12speed cable shifting at the time. Before long Ratio were also building extender cages for 1x sram derailleurs so I eventually went back to 1x and grabbed one of their long cages so I could shift into a 52 on the back if need be. I could have gone to 12 or 13 speed shifting with one of their replacement ratchets, but I stayed with 11 speed so I could keep my current wheels and installed a Garbaruk 11-50 cassette on the back. The lower gears were a big advantage with the type of riding I do. 

Ratio derailer extender cage.

Garbaruk 11-50 11 speed.

Being ideologically opposed to electric gears I still had one major beef with the OPEN's design. I hated the internal cable routing, having to remove the crank and BB just to replace a derailleur cable was not good for my blood pressure. Especially when the appropriate BB removal tool failed to budge the original creaking plastic BB. 

The fix came in two parts, a screw-together Wheels Manufacturing BB and full-length internal cable housing. The screw-in BB was effectively self-extracting with the un-screw, tap, un-screw, tap extraction method with a small rubber mallet. But to be honest, the BB shell does not need to come out now anyway, I just tap the bearings out if they need replacing. 

Growtac Equal brakes paired with Sram Red. Light, strong, adjustable.

My next improvement came with the addition of some funky blue Growtac Equal cable brakes, at least the equal of my hydros, and when paired with Sram red cable shifters, a few grams lighter than the standard Sram Force hydros. I was super impressed with the brakes, the power, the light action, the adjustability, and the colour. My days of bleeding draggy brakes were over. I have been hammering these brakes for a good while now and really enjoy having the ability to adjust them on the fly if needed. It’s actually a feature, knowing if your brakes need adjustment, not something that you get a heads-up for with hydros which take up the slack automatically, until you hear that sound of metal on metal. The stock sintered organic pads last incredibly well. Normally I would only use sintered metal. 

When Growtac announced their new stepless (friction) drop-bar shifters on the Japanese domestic market I was lucky that a friend was in Japan and was able to snaffle me a pair. The ability to use any old derailleur or cassette with their shifters feels very liberating to me and so far, I have been very happy with the way they work. I really feel like they had me in mind when they came up with this concept. The levers are not unlike the Sram red cable levers I was using previously in that they are quite narrow, although the finish looks a bit like Campagnolo Ekar, and the inner shift lever also looks a tad Campy. Despite the hard edges on this inside shifter, it never caused me any issues with kit clearance or rubbing on my hands during the 4 days of the 830 km Renegades Muster. The shifting is surprisingly quiet, and you can adjust the amount of friction in the system. It is apparently possible to link up the left and right levers so you can shift up on one shifter and down on the other, I haven’t tried this, but Growtac show videos of it working.  

The initial set-up is a bit more complicated than a typical shifter installation because you are able to install different sized shifting drums, depending on whether you are using a road or mtb derailleur. I don’t know just how far the launch has gone in Japan or what the plans are internationally. I think the Japanese dollar might have had an effect. 

With the ability to run both 650b and 700c wheels on the OPEN UP I have a bike that can change from trail to commuter mode in minutes. It's not a cafe bike and gets a pretty hard time - mostly on the local trails on our weekend rides. To be honest it spends most time with the 650b wheels on as I have a bunch of old 26ers I tend to commute on. 

As mentioned I have done a couple of bikepacking events on the OPEN using different sized wheels each time, and I definitely prefer the 650b's. For bikepacking I throw on my dyno wheel, klite lights, B-17 saddle and aero-bars for the long days and go down on the front from a 40 to a 36-tooth chain-ring. For cross season the 700's go back on. 

Day 2 on the 2024 Renegades Muster

I've used 43 mm tires on the 700c wheels, although clearance officially maxes out at 40 mm. In 650b mode, 50 mm seems to be the max but you can go a lot bigger on the front. It's a shame that 650b has fallen out of favour but the difference in height between a 50 mm 650b and a 38 mm 700c wheel feels minimal, so I am always going to prefer that over a 700 c wheel that just gets taller or smaller depending on if you are running a 50 mm tire vs a 35 mm tire. 

I feel like the bike is pretty sorted currently. I could go back to 2x now that I have brand agnostic shifters but I'm probably just going to take the lazy option and go up or down on the front chain-ring sizing depending on what I am doing. 

I haven't ruled out externally routing the rear shifter cable housing for a better path, but with friction shifting, your gears are never actually out of adjustment anyway. 

The OPEN UP’s design is pretty old by modern gravel bike standards but somehow it still does a really good job of anything that I've thrown at it so far. I won’t be moving it on anytime soon. 

Details 

• Frame: OPEN UP generation 2 
• Shifters/levers: Growtac Equal Control stepless 
• Brakes: Growtac Equal 
• Rear Mech: Sram Rival with Ratio-technology SR52 cage 
• Front Wheel: Hunt 650b or Easton 700c or SP dyno hub in 700c with Stans rim 
• Rear Wheel: DTSWISS 650b or Easton 700c 
• Tires: Specialized Fastrak in 650b x 2.0/Raceking 2.2 or Rene Herse Barlow Pass  
• Cassette: Garbaruk 11-50, 11 speed or Shimano XTR 11-40, 11 speed 
• Cranks: Sram Force 
• Chainrings: 36 or 42 
• Pedals: Shimano XT 
• Seatpost: Thompson Elite 
• Seat collar: OPEN 
• Saddle: Specialized Power 168 mm or Brooks B-17 
• Headset: Cane Creek 
• BB: Wheels Manufacturing screw-in 
• Stem: Cheapie weener UNO 
• Bars: Ritchey Venturemax