Quick look: Reilly Gradient 2018

Reilly has updated the Gradient gravel/adventure bike for 2018. It’s still made from seamless 3Al/2.5V titanium but the biggest differences are that it’s now compatible with flat mount disc brakes – it was post mount before – and tyre clearance has been increased. It’ll now take 47mm tyres whereas 44mm was the maximum previously.

Check out Dave’s review of the Reilly Gradient here. 

Mark Reilly dropped a new Reilly T640 road bike here at road.cc last week (keep your eye out for more on that soon), and brought along the updated Gradient so we could have a quick look. This is the most popular bike that Reilly makes. The frame can actually take tyres wider than 47mm, it’s the fork that’s the limiting factor.

When Dave Arthur reviewed the 2017 version of the Reilly Gradient he said, “It's fast and steady on the road, but plenty of fun if you throw it through corners at high speed. The Gradient is right at home negotiating narrow tree-lined singletrack with loose corners and steep climbs and would be a good choice if you're looking for a bike to tackle one of the growing number of gravel events like the Dirty Reiver.”

Go to Dave's review for all the other tech details.

Gradients start at £2,799. That gets you a model built up with a Shimano 105 groupset. A Sram Rival 1x version is £2,899 while both Shimano Ultegra and Sram Force are £3,099.

Oh yeah, we’ve invented a new term for this genre: ‘gradventure bike’… because we definitely need more terms to describe this sector! Course, someone else might have come up with it first. If ‘gradventure bike’ does turn out to have originated with road.cc, we’ll allow you to use it as long as you stick 5p into our Drink At Your Desk Friday tin every time you do so (we don’t want to price ourselves out of the market).

One other thing that’s on the way from Reilly is a carbon-fibre road bike called the 500SL (we don't have any pics of this one yet). The big news is that Reilly reckons the frame is going to come in at under 600g! That’s quite a claim! Reilly has been busy optimising the carbon layup and believes this is possible. We should have more info on the 500SL in the next couple of weeks. 

www.reillycycleworks.com