The boutique carbon fiber brand Argonaut has a new gravel bike, the GR3, which mixes elements of so-called ‘fast gravel’ bikes with a very slack front end that you’d normally find on an adventure gravel bike — or even a mountain bike.
The 950-gram GR3 frame features a 68.5-degree head tube, which is far slacker than you’d find on just about any gravel bike, but also has 415mm chainstays, which are shorter than virtually all gravel bikes. The frame stack is also quite low, in line with gravel races bikes, which normally have head angles in the 71 or 72-degree range. Tire clearance? A whopping 50mm!
The end result is a unique mix of geometry and ride characteristics.
Company founder Ben Farver said he designed the GR3 for what he feels like is a hole in the market: a race bike with downhill stability.
“In a gravel race, a lot of times, you’ll get with a group on a climb. And then when you crest over and descend, that’s where people will get gapped off or get a flat, and lose the group,” Farver said. “So that clearance is important – being able to run a big enough tire so that you can descend aggressively without flatting. And then also the front-end handling, and the lower bottom bracket, and a really slack front end, for that stability to go downhill really, really fast, as fast as you can, without the bike being the limiting factor.”
One of only three brands in the United States to build carbon fiber bikes in house (Allied and Alchemy are the other two), Argonaut has a staff of 19 people in Bend, Oregon, where custom and stock bikes are assembled using 3D-printed silicone mandrels instead of the more traditional bladders used by many other manufacturers.
Farver started making steel bikes in Oregon in 2007. He soon moved to carbon, using a local manufacturer to construct stock and custom frames, and in recent years the company built a dedicated facility and brought everything in house.
The Argonaut RM3 road model that debuted last year was the first bike built in the new facility.
In Bend, Argonauts does everything from cutting unidirectional carbon, to 3D printing the mandrel, to molding them in small pieces, to mitering the tubes for a smooth junction, to gluing and and then curing the frames, to the detailed finish work of sanding and painting.
GR3 ride impressions
So how does this thing ride? To put it bluntly, the GR3 is unlike anything I’ve ever ridden. The mix of racy and adventure is a funky cocktail. For racy, there’s the short rear end and low stack. For adventure, there’s the slack front end. And 50mm clearance!
Let’s break each of these components down.
The low stack makes for a road-like position. The 56cm bike I rode had a 57.1cm stack, which is comparable to the new BMC Kaius aero gravel bike. That’s lower than the Cervélo Áspero or the Specialized Crux or the Giant Revolt.
Is lower a good thing? Well, for me, I like the position for riding in groups, or just getting a position that feels comfortable.
The short rear end helps the bike accelerate well, and normally short chainstays make cornering feel more nimble. But when combined with a slack front end, it gets a little muddled.
The reach is a little more traditional. The 56cm bike I rode had an effective top tube of 56cm. That’s shorter than most current so-called progressive bikes.
Standing up on the bike, the front end feels heavy. Not like a downhill bike, but heading in that direction. Riding on choppy trails, though, handling came into its own.
Farver said he wanted to build a bike for he and his coworkers live and ride. Bend has a slew of trails just outside of town. We spent a few hours on those trails, and the bike was easy to maneuver, winding around the trees. There was also a huge amount of what former pro rider and Bend local Barry Wicks call moon dust — super fine and deep sand. The logging roads were loaded with the stuff, which covered but didn’t smooth over the rough lava rocks underneath. And yeah, having a slack front end was a bit of help in plowing through that stuff.
Most gravel bikes have front ends in the 70-72 range. The BMC URS adventure gravel bike is 70 degrees. The Salsa Warbird, an OG gravel race bike, is at 70.75. The Kaius, Áspero, Canyon Grail, Revolt, Crux and Trek Checkpoint are all 72. That’s not to say that having a majority makes something right, but just to note how much of an outlier the GR3’s 68.5 figure is.
Beyond the trails, we rode lots of jeep road. Having confidence on the downhills there was a positive, when I was never sure in the dappled shade where I was coming up on a deep hole or a shadow. Farver is not wrong: more stable is more stable downhill.
On the flats, that 68.5 head tube means more stubborn. Out of the saddle, especially on pavement or on smooth ground, when moving the bike side to side, it felt a bit plodding. Now did that slack head tube actually affect speed? That would be hard to believe or measure, but that was certainly my sensation. Slower handling means slower handling.
Another notable thing on the back end of the GR3 is the crazy tight clearance on the chainring. Argonaut CEO Alex Candelario said it was a single millimeter between the ring and the chainstay. I had no issues with this, and didn’t get any rub despite my 185lb weight and the rough roads, but the tiny clearance is a crazy visual. Match that with the 50mm of tire clearance and you have a unique rear end.
Of course the bike comes with the T47 bottom bracket that Argonaut designed with Chris King. This is an oversized and threaded BB design.
Claimed weight is 910g for a 56cm frame, with a 400g fork.
Argonaut is also making its own stem.
Pricing is $6,500 for the frameset, complete bikes going for about $12,000. For more information, check out argonautcycles.com.
