Named after western Berlin’s favorite escape into nature, the new carbon mixed-surface gravel bike – the 8bar Grunewald is built to tackle any road or trail. Inspired by their adaptable Mitte bikes, 8bar designed a faster all-road bike with traditional road geometry but enough clearance for your 650b mountain bike tires.
8bar Grunewald carbon 650b gravel road bike
Like we saw yesterday with Wilier’s TT Turbine on the complete opposite end of the cycling spectrum, the Grunewald also looks surprisingly familiar for a gravel bike. Carbon 650b gravel bikes are evolving down a similar path, and there’s nothing revolutionary looking in the Grunewald’s oversized tubing, proprietary seatpost & hidden clamp, or its dropped chainstay design. Again that’s not necessarily a bad thing, as 8bar refines the do-it-all gravel all-road bikes, with up to 2″ tire clearance and at an affordable pricepoint.
Tech details
Tires & gearing seem to be the big deciding factors in gravel adventure versatility, and the Grunewald seems to do well on both accounts. The new bike gets tire clearance on both carbon frame & fork for up to 27.5 x 2″ (650b x 51mm) or 700c x 40mm rubber.
As for gearing, the bike features a removable front derailleur braze-on tab and can run up to a road standard 53/39 double. Plus, it gets standard modular internal routing that will work with electronic drivetrains as well. So the choice is yours, build it as 1x adventure bike or a fast, fat-tire road hammering machine.
Adding more adventure versatility, the bike gets full rack and fender mounts. On the full carbon fork that also means a set of extra bottle cage bosses on each leg.
The UD carbon Grunewald gets flat mount discs so can be run with either 140 or 160mm rotors. And like the original Exploro, it pairs a 12mm rear thru-axle to a 15mm one in the front. It also goes with a tapered 1.125-1.5″ and a pressfit BB86 bottom bracket.
Geometry-wise quick, road-like handling was 8bar’s goal for the 1150g frame (small). The Grunewald sticks with average road angles 71° headtube/72.5°seattube and mid-range 420mm chainstays that offer a balanced but still agile feel that should mix well on both tarmac and loose surface riding. The bike is available in a four size range (S-XL), although we haven’t yet seen the numbers for the XL.
Pricing & Availability
Like with the debut of most of their new bikes, 8bar is introducing the bike now and taking pre-orders right away (until the end of May). That gives buyers a chance to get a discounted price if you pay up front, with delivery set for August 2018.
The Grunewald is available for now pre-order as either a 1600€ frameset (2000€ regular pricing) or a complete 8.2kg bike with full Ultegra R8000 2×11 from 3150€ (4200€ retail).
