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    The 2021 Kona Rove DL bicycle

    Kona's 2021 Rove DL steel gravel bike is fitted with 650B wheels, drop bars, and a single front chainring11 This is only made possible by wide-range cassettes that a long-cage rear derailer can shift through to quickly take up slack in the chain. It's not as efficient as typical multi-front chainring systems due to the bend in the chain, but it's a lot less maintenance. paired with an 11-speed cassette. I bought one in 2021 for commuting because I wanted something more comfortable than the narrow-tire road bike I had pressed into service a few years earlier. The wide tires provide a nice cushion and the smaller wheels reduce the likelihood of toe overlap with fenders. The lack of a front derailer means less maintenance and fiddling to find the right front/rear gear combination. A few months after I bought it, I built a new front wheel to add dynamo lighting so I wouldn't need to keep charging batteries on my lights. About a year later, I upgraded to a 12-speed electronic drivetrain and power meter because I was using it on steeper climbs and wanted to analyze fitness more precisely.

    There are a ridiculous number of eyelets, especially on the front fork, for mounting gear carriers. A rear rack fits without QR axle adapters or a brake bolt mount. There's even an extra set of bottle cage mounts on the bottom of the down tube.

    It comes stock with a 40T front chainring and 11-42T rear cassette, providing a gear ratio range from 3.64 to 0.95. With my wheels and tires, that translates to a range of 98 to 26 gear inches, which was not quite low enough for some of the climbs near me. In its current form, it has a range of over 100 to 21 gear inches.

    Fitment

    The biggest change from the stock bike is the electronic rear derailer and shifter.22 Most electronic drivetrains have switched to hydraulic braking, but my bike uses cable-actuated disc brakes. SRAM still makes electronic shifters with mechanical brakes for road bikes with rim brakes, but only for higher-end groupsets. Unfortunately, the cheaper SRAM Force eTap AXS shift-brake lever was out of stock everywhere when I upgraded the bike. The upgrade kit comes with a mountain bike shifter meant for handlebars with a diameter of 22.2mm, but my drop bars are 31.8mm. This meant that the collar supplied with the shifter didn't fit, so I had to use an adapter instead. The new rear derailer supports an 11-50T cassette that, when paired with a 40T chainring, reaches a low gear of 21 gear inches, compared to 26 for the original drivetrain. Shifts feel faster and it’s a lot easier to dial in the derailer adjustment using the micro-adjust system. There’s also a power meter integrated into the left-hand crank so I can track how much effort I'm putting into getting up a steep climb. When I installed the drivetrain, I also started using wax instead of lube to keep the chain lubricated.

    I temporarily swapped out the drop bars for swept-back, cruiser-style aluminum handlebars with road brake-compatible brake levers and grips. I couldn't find a position that didn't eventually cause my hands to go numb on longer uphill rides. Eventually, I switched them back to drop bars with a slight flair.

    A proper bike needs a way of carrying gear, so I added a rear rack. I don't need three water bottles on my rides, so I put my toolkit in the bottom-most bottle mount to store a patch kit, multi-tool, chain link pliers, and spare tube. For hydration, the two normal bottle cages hold metal bottles, with the seat tube able to hold a 40oz bottle. A pump is mounted alongside the seat tube bottle cage.

    The biggest quality of life improvement for using my bike was replacing the front wheel hub with a dynamo. An automotive-style beam pattern on the front headlight can be paired with a large rear solid light at all times, with only a small amount of drag.

    A bicycle computer head unit pairs with sensors and records my rides. Just in case, a rear-facing camera can record any crashes or oddities. The front-facing camera generated enough RF interference to knock my head unit GPS offline, so I stopped riding with it. There's even a radar unit mounted to my rack that displays any overtaking cars, but I’ve silenced the audio alerts due to false positives. I stuck a tracking device between the bottom bottle cage and the frame in case the bike is stolen or misplaced.

    The bike came with knobby tires, so I replaced them with a pair of slick, 48mm-wide ones. These ended up being a bit too wide, even, so I may downsize once these wear out. I also replaced the stock saddle with one that's more comfortable.

    To keep the drivetrain clean and make it suitable for inclement weather, fenders wrap the tires. They were a pain to install, mainly because both the front and rear eyelets don't fit the mounting hardware. For the front, I had to shave down the plastic safety clips (so the front fender can detach if it gets caught in the wheel) with a utility knife. On the back, I couldn't get a good fit and had to mount them to the rack's extra set of eyelets. But they look really nice and otherwise fit well, with a slight rattle in the front fender at times.

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