Gravel bikes upgrades?

General Discussion
1

Are gravel frames useful in Zwift?

I’m completing upgrading my SL8 and will start the long multi year process of upgrading a Halo frame.

I’ve decided to upgrade my Tron because I already own it and I like it.

While I generally don’t use any of the other Zwift branded frames, I have to choose 3 to upgrade.

The TT can be useful (though not the fastest) and I guess the MTB frame is still fastest in the Jungle?

So is the gravel bike good for anything or is it as useful as my very cool Atomic Cruiser?

2

Not very useful. I wanted the P74 so I did the SL8 and S-Works Venge, then hastened the process with the Allez Sprint. Also doing the Aethos sometimes now that I got there but mostly upgrading the P74 in group rides. SL8 for races.

1 Like
3

My choices of Zwift frames are
Zwift Carbon, which I have fully upgraded
Zwift TT, since all you have to do is ride. Put time in.
Zwift Mountain Bike, easy to get the elevation. I have done workouts on the Aple, pretty simple.
On the new Fuhgeddaboudit route, I primarily rode the Zwift TT, and switched to the Zwift Mountain bike on the bigger climbs like the NYC KOM and the longer climbs up to the glass roads.

4

Could also do the Zwift Steel bike

5

I think all the bikes, Zwift gravel, steel, carbon,Atomic Cruiser and Buffalo all take the same effort to upgrade

The 3rd frame does appear to be useful unless you want to be Ric Flair cool!! :star_struck::flexed_biceps:.

I don’t know about the BMX frame.

I saw a race where everyone was on BMX but I don’t know if upgrades were disabled.

Enabling the upgrades is a way to shake up the field.

Eventually we will all be on an upgraded Halo with aero socks.Then a well timed Burrito may have some play.

6

I like the Atomic Cruiser as it’s easy to spot your avatar in a bigger bunch pack.

I upgraded the Atomic Cruiser, the BMX Bike, and the mountain bike. Those were my 3 Zwift frames, but none of them are really that useful.

7

Fairly pointless unless Zwift decides to put a randomly changing surface on Tempus Fugit with sand drifts - these sand drifts over the road would favour gravel bikes and MTBs and slow down all road and TT bikes to a crawl. This would really make the robopacer groups and races on Tempus more dynamic.

My upgrade process was SL8 S-Works, Aethos and S-Works MTB, the latter two doing daily 1 or 2x ADZ laps. That got me the Project 74 quite quickly. No workout modes on ADZ used, just shifted gears and went with the gradients.

Then the Cannondale I went CAAD, the Cannondale Evo and one of the other slow Cannondale bikes to unlock the R4000. That was a miserable slow process, all those bikes were so slow and you have to do heaps of distance on them…

I am currently about 1400km away from level 4 on the Project 74.

8

I’ll probably upgrade TT, MTB & gravel just in case Zwift decides to make gravel a thing.