Paula for geeks

To kick off the topic, I'm going to start with a question and a comment that is made to us occasionally:

" -Why do you use Aluminum and not Carbon? "

" - For the same price, I can have a Carbon frame kit "

Our position is simple.

Above all, we wanted to offer an artisanal frame kit made locally and offered at an acceptable price.

We could technically have offered a carbon fatto a mano but at what price?

I think that the number of customers who are both interested in the product, generously endowed in terms of money, and crazy enough to afford such a frame kit from a brand that came out of nowhere is infinitesimal.

And then, this is where we may disagree but, for Gravel, is carbon really the essential material as it is on the road? Not sure.

Then there is steel with its lively side, notably with the high-end Columbus Spirit and XCR alloys or the Reynolds 853.

Is this wrong? No.

Steel is a great material, but if you want to have an affordable, responsive, light and rigid Gravel bike, I don't think steel is the best choice.

What about titanium then? Magic Carpet Ride as they say. Yes, it's a very nice material that we will perhaps even offer one day on another project but here again, the cost/performance ratio, for a Gravel bike intended for a wide audience, is frankly not ideal.

So we are left with Aluminum.

A default choice? Nay! Believe me if you want, but aluminum was the material selected from the start for Paula.

Yeah ! A well-worked aluminum frame, made from hydroformed tubes in high-end alloys and with modern geometry, offers behavior (comfort / rigidity / dynamism) very close to that of carbon, which in my opinion in dynamics is the reference.

If you add large tires of 40 mm or more width to this, the difference is even less noticeable.

Aluminum is not significantly heavier than carbon.

Well, it all depends on where you place your cursor, but for us, with a bike on which you are going to put a bunch of panniers, the hunt for the slightest superfluous gram seems a little superfluous.

A Paula in M, mounted full Campa weighs around 9 kg ready to ride.

Not bad is not it ?

And then aluminum is less expensive than the aforementioned materials and in the event of a problem on the other side of the globe, it is more easily repaired than carbon or titanium for example.

For the reasons given above, we consider that for gravel, the T47 standard is the best today and will probably remain so for many years.

Beyond the diameter of the case, we must also discuss the width of the box.

There you have two schools.

Either you use a standard 68mm wide box and bearings in external cups.

Either you decide to use an 86 mm box, therefore wider and with the bearings in internal cups for that matter.

We naturally chose the second solution because it allows for greater spacing of the insertion of the chainstays on the bottom bracket and thus significantly increases the clearance for the rear tire.

And as the adage says “ With big brats, taking the roads makes you hilarious ” we said to ourselves that it was the best decision to make.