Vitus Substance CRS2 Gravel bike

the_spooks

Considering buying one of these as the “do anything” bike, commuting through the week, winter training bike and gravel bike if I ever wanted to get dirty.
Anyone own one that could give an opinion. The specs look good for what I want and want to spend (tubeless, disc and grx) but specs can be deceiving. Very few ( none) reviews that I can find. Any info would be great.

luv2ride

Might be worth asking on the Singletrack forum, or the UK Gravel Bike Club Facebook page; lots of owners over there. They seem to rate it.

singleton

I've been looking recently and this was on my short list. I was also interested in the CRS-1, but the 1x only has Apex for the same price which didn't seem such good value compared to the CRS-2.
I think that Vitus use a rebranded Carbonda CFR696 frame - as do people like Planet-X with their strangely named Free Ranger.
However, there are none of the Vitus bikes available at the moment, so I ended up going with a Planet-X 1x Free Ranger that comes with a Force groupset.

lettingthedaysgoby

I've just ordered an SRS-2, I've wanted a steel framed 650b bike for a while now and £1350 for that with a GRX groupset seemed like a bargain, so I couldn't resist.

singleton

Nice.
I considered the steel ones too, but the price was higher when I looked and as it needs to double up as my winter bike for fast group rides, I settled elsewhere.

lettingthedaysgoby

singleton said:

Nice.
I considered the steel ones too, but the price was higher when I looked and as it needs to double up as my winter bike for fast group rides, I settled elsewhere.

My plan is that as well as for having fun on gravel/forest trails, it will also become a bit of a "do it all" bike for both commuting and winter group rides - for the latter I'll stick on a pair of 700c wheels with something like 32c Conti 4 Seasons. 46/11 won't win me any sprints to the cafe but will just about be OK for the less frantic winter riding I do.

singleton

I've gone with a 1x groupset so might have a different issue trying to keep up with a quick ride.
I use a set of 700c wheels with Gravel King 32 slicks and full guards in the winter - IMO the tyres are only very slightly slower than pure road tyres and are robust and have good grip on bad roads in bad weather.

the_spooks

Well I finally got around to buying the Vitus, looks a cracking bike and after one ride I would love to say I’m hooked but well things never go to plan do they. I fell off first ride and broke my hip so gravel riding will need to wait for me, plus point is the bike was fine.
One thing to mention these bikes run a bit large so consider this when/if buying.... as it turns out this is borderline too big but seeing as I crashed it I can’t return it.