Argonaut GR3 first ride review: Carbon layup just for you

Gravel cycling is maturing. We've started to settle into the ruts, and the wild experimentation of years past is falling away. There are adventure bikes and gravel race bikes and there's not a lot of crossover anymore. Do you want to go fast in a one-day race or underbike on single track? Whatever feels best to you, we have options on our list of the best gravel bikes. What if you are looking for something a little more personal though?

Have you ever considered a bespoke bike that is uniquely yours? Argonaut sits in the high desert of the American Pacific Northwest and it has a new gravel bike for you to consider. It's a bike unlike anything else on the market, not only because every single frame is hand built to your exact measurements but also because it's a go-fast gravel bike that bends genres. You could describe it as a gravel race bike but as the big brands move towards road bikes with tyre clearance, Argonaut is going the opposite direction. The establishment is zigging and Argonaut is zagging, but does it work? I spent a day in the landscape near the headquarters testing just that and I came away impressed. If you feel like the gravel bike you want doesn't exist, keep reading. It could be that the perfect bike is out there but you haven't heard about it before today. 

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Design and aesthetics 

Most people across the globe think of Portland as Oregon and Portland is almost synonymous with rain. That's pretty far from the truth though; Portland sits against the border and the vast majority of the Oregon landscape is high desert. Instead of the greens and blues of Portland you can expect a lot of brown with a bit green here and there coming from the abundant Ponderosa Pine trees. 

The Argonaut GR3 takes the colour palette of central Oregon and distils it down into a series of swatches. Then those swatches play out across the frame as a series of angles that quite literally spray the landscape across the carbon. There’s even a bit of orange that seems like a reminder of the wildfires that come to this part of the world every year. Rather than stand out with a stark white, red, or even black, Argonaut goes with the flow. The angles of the paint match the mountains in the distance and the angular tube shapes of the bike. There's an easiness on the eyes that never says 'look at me' and it's a perfect metaphor for the rest of the design. 

Solving the challenge of space between the crank, the chainstays, and the tyres is the engineering challenge that every brand has to solve. The GR3 is a lively ride that can climb with the best of them and that means it has a short chainstay. Not 420mm short like other short chainstay gravel bikes but really short, like 415mm. It's not quite the 410mm which you tend to see on road bikes but there are very few gravel bikes that can match it. The Cannondale Topstone Lefty 1 and Lefty 3 have 415mm chainstays but to get there Cannondale had to move to a 650b tire and dish their wheels differently.  

The Argonaut solution doesn't use any tricks to get to 415mm. There's no lack of tyre clearance either. Max tyre clearance is 700x50mm so you can get as rowdy as you feel like and never feel held back. The solution in this case is just really tight clearance with the crank arms and an artful carbon layup that squeezes between the players but keeps the bike stiff where it needs to. Just don't expect to fit a crank arm power meter or a front derailleur in there. 

Gravel loves a mullet, right? The GR3 is all party in the back but it's balanced with business in the front. Along the way you'll find a reasonably low bottom bracket of 75mm that adds a bit of stability but it's the front where the magic balance comes from. Racy gravel bike headtube angles tend to land around 72-degrees but the GR3 measures out to 68.5-degrees. That puts it close to a cross country mountain bike. 

If you are feeling a little lost in the details and numbers, owner Ben Farver says it a little more succinctly. "Most gravel bikes lack stability when descending at high speed and feel sluggish going uphill. The team and I wanted to make a bike that climbed and descended well but also tracked properly on the flats. The GravelFirst geometry of the GR3 is a completely resolved, cohesive geometry where all the dimensions and angles complement each other. A 415mm rear-center yields great acceleration and makes the bike climb like a road bike. The lower BB adds stability when cornering, and the super slack, mountain bike inspired head tube angle of 68.5º inspires confidence in any rider. It's like the bike is a super easygoing friend rather than a temperamental ex. Wrong line? No worries, I got you. Rather than: Wrong line? Haha….. you’re screwed!"

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Specifications and build

Argonaut bikes are custom and you can spec whatever you want on the RM3. The wheels aren't even suggested, so just pick your favourites. Still, there are some standard builds and some pieces shared between them. The frames use a 1.5" tapered headtube and join to a fork Argonaut also makes. The bottom bracket is a threaded piece and comes together with the help of fellow Oregon business Chris King and its Threadfit T47-30x. The seatpost is also an Argonaut piece with engineered flex and zero offset but for the handlebars the brand has turned to the Enve all-road bars. The bars route the cables down through the Argonaut built stem. 

From that base, the suggested builds represent the three major groupset options. Choose between SRAM AXS Force, Shimano GRX Di2, SRAM AXS Red, or Campagnolo Ekar. SRAM and Shimano groupsets get paired with a e*thirteen XCX Race Carbon Gravel crank and the SRAM groupsets use a SRAM Eagle rear mech to cover a 12-speed e*thirteen Helix R 9-45 cassette while the Shimano option uses an XTR rear and an 11-speed 11-40 XTR cassette. Choose Ekar and that gets the 13-speed 9-42 cassette and everything else stays Italian. 

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Performance

The journey with Argonaut started in a way that was both familiar, and not. I got an email thanking me for coming out and asking me for some bike measurements. Often sizing seems to be an afterthought for bike testing but this not only the opposite of that, it was well beyond anything I'd ever experienced before; I was asked for essentially every measurement you can think of.

The day I arrived; my Garmin Rally SPD pedals got threaded on while I changed, then I got on the bike and it was perfect. Every touch point was where I expected it should be, every measurement was perfect, and the saddle was the same Fizik Argo adaptive I ride normally. I test bikes all the time and while sometimes the mechanics get the numbers right, they often don't. A common issue is that the saddle can't go forward enough because there's a setback post and I need a zero setback. Whatever it is, I end up having to take what I can get, but this was very different.

Then we started riding: As we transitioned from a bit of smooth single track to a rougher double track, I started to ask Ben some questions. I told him that since I ride a middle size bike and I ride a lot, I tend to be able to ride whatever bike without issue so why might I, or others like me, want to think about custom. The explanation is what really sets Argonaut apart as a custom bike maker. 

The fact that Argonaut got my sizing correct, and my touchpoints where I like them, might have been impressive to me, but it apparently wasn't hard. It was explained that building a bike to custom measurements isn't hard and it's not the point of the GR3. What is unique lies in the second set of questions where I covered my power, weight, and riding style. The point of those questions was to match the carbon layup to my needs.

You can think of carbon as a spring. The layup tailors how that spring reacts to forces from the rider and the ground. If you buy an off-the-shelf bike then the spring is right for some kind of median weight and riding style that the brand has in mind. The thing is, I'm not that heavy and I don't put out that much power. That means I likely never benefit from the full advantage of the carbon layup because I don't weigh enough, or put out enough weight, to fully compress the spring. Ben objected that it was too simple to say it's like mountain bike suspension, but it is. There is, of course, more nuance but if you never change the pressure on a mountain bike shock it will never work quite right for you. 

I could feel the difference too. This isn't all just theory. Within the first ten minutes I knew the GR3 was one of the best bikes I had ever been on. It's not drastically different but in the same way the touch points just sort of fell where I needed them, the bike feels right. It responds the way you think it should and you never have to learn the bike. There's another aspect of the ride though. 

That whole conversation with Ben was happening while moving far faster than I tend to feel comfortable with over rough double track. From time to time, it would get steeper and he would drop me but for the vast majority of the day I was able to chat with whoever I was near and I didn't have to stop and concentrate to descend. That laid back front end creates a bike that helps me, a terrible descender, feel comfortable enough to bomb down the descents and chat while doing it. 

Turns out Argonaut sponsored rider Sara Max feels the same way. Sure, you could write her off since she's paid to say nice things about the bike, but of all the things she could mention it's the descending she talks about. Sara says "For years, I struggled to keep up on the downhills. Then I got my GR3. From that first day, I started clocking PR’s on my local routes and even getting QOM’s at some of the biggest races in the country." 

It’s also worth mentioning, the specific build I had was the Campagnolo Ekar version. I had never ridden Ekar but I’ve spent years with Campagnolo and I’m a big fan. The gearing meant that no matter what we were doing that day, I never ran out of gears. In the early part of the day when we were on the pavement, and feeling fresh, there was always a low enough gear to descend at speed or sprint up to a stop sign. Late in the day when we were working on an 8km climb, and feeling exhausted, there was an easy enough gear to climb with tired legs. Then, on the other side of that climb, there was plenty of opportunity to appreciate the absolutely unmatched braking that Campy offers. I experienced Ekar as the absolute best that 1x could offer and I’d have to think hard about making a different choice if I was building my own GR3. 

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Early Verdict

There are really two sides to think about with the Argonaut GR3 gravel bike. One angle is to think of it like any other bike and to consider the innovative geometry. If I look at it from that point of view, it's the bike I'd imagine in my head. It's got perfect gearing, excellent brakes, and it helps me descend in a way that feels safe and stable. If I was drawing up that imaginary bike, I'd only add aero shaping and hidden mudguard mounts for winter training. 

It's a bike to go fast on, both up and down, but it's not as limited as a gravel race bike. If I want to get into something really rough, I can do it with 50mm tyres. If I have to descend through a switchback there's no toe overlap so I can actually make the turns without unclipping. The GR3 is the bike for having fun that means going fast. If that happens to include racing that's fine but if not, that works too. 

Then there's the other part of the bike, the fact that it's totally custom. Most of the time I don't much care for the concept of custom because I fit just about every bike and they work well enough. The GR3 was an eye opener though; having the perfect carbon layup was unlike anything I'd previously experienced. Admittedly it's a small change but the rest of the industry is changing in a way that starts to put a focus on custom. 

There are a handful of bikes out there that put themselves into competition with an Argonaut GR3. As the prices rise for bikes from Specialized, BMC, Trek, and many others, they start to enter the same buying space. If the price is the same, how do you want to spend your money and what will be the best value? The Argonaut GR3 weighs 7.62kg fully built the way I rode it so you could spend your money to go lighter. You could also spend your money to get more aero optimised. Another option though is to spend your money on the perfect fit and carbon layup for your riding. You'll have to decide what sounds most intriguing for you. 

Tech Specs: Argonaut GR3 custom gravel bike 

• Price: $6500 framset (fork, stem, frame)
• Weight: 7.62 kg built bike with Campagnolo Ekar
• Groupset: Campagnolo Ekar
• Crankset: Campagnolo Ekar (40T)
• Cassette: Ekar 13s 9-42
• Wheels: Zipp 303 Firecrest as test but built as specced by customer
• Brakes: Campagnolo Ekar (160/160)
• Bar/stem: Enve SES AR bar/Argonaut
• Seatpost: Argonaut
• More Info: argonautcycles.com