Gravel Epic Switzerland Bike Check | A Closer Look at Ollie’s Moots Routt RSL

Take a closer look at the Moots Routt RSL, Ollie’s bike for the 200km Gravel Epic Switzerland. With a lightweight and strong titanium frame and racy geometry, it’s well suited for two days of hard riding on the compact gravel of the beautiful Swiss Alps! See how he set it up for this challenge!

In association with Moots 👉 https://gcn.eu/Moots

Check out the Gravel Epic routes on Komoot:
Epic 👉 https://gcn.eu/KomootGravelEpic1
Discovery 👉 https://gcn.eu/KomootGravelEpic2

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Do you love the welds as much as Ollie? Let us know in the comments below! 👇

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Music – licensed by Epidemic Sound:
ES_Too Tired – Smartface
ES_Shinigami – SINY
ES_Shokawa – SINY
ES_On Our Own (Instrumental Version) – Vaain
ES_The Way Used to Be – Brendon Moeller
ES_The Guiding Light – Christoffer Moe Ditlevsen

Photos: © Velo Collection (TDW) / Getty Images & © Bettiniphoto / http://www.bettiniphoto.net/

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Ricochet you take your aim fire away fire away you shoot me down but i won’t fall i am titanium or so wrote david guetta apparently after being just incredibly moved and impressed after riding a moose route rsl titanium bike i may have made that up but anyway i’m in valet switzerland it’s

Incredibly beautiful and i’m here to take part in the gravel epic switzerland event and to do so moot has kindly lent me their rather beautiful route rsl titanium bike and well there’s a full video documenting the event and how i get on in that over on the gcn main

Channel but here we’re going to take a look at this sweet bike in more detail so let’s fire away Moops is a brand known for their beautiful titanium frames and the route rsl is no exception to that and jokes aside i’m a big fan of titanium being used for this kind of bike i think it’s a really appropriate material to use it’s light it’s strong it’s very robust

Which is ideal you know if you’re going to be riding a rough stuff with like rock strikes and things like that you know to me it makes a lot of sense i also like how with the whole adventure riding thing if you start attaching frame bags to a bike like this they’re

Not going to rub away the straps aren’t going to rub away at the lacquer and the carbon as they can do on a carbon bike and well in addition to that you know riding in wet dirty conditions titanium just has excellent corrosion resistance The name route comes from route county which is where moots is based in colorado springs and the rsl is the kind of racier uh gravel bike in in their range it’s uh racier than the standard route thanks to sort of more racial tweaked geometry so in terms of stack

And reach it’s slightly longer slightly lower than the standard one and the head angle is actually still quite quite slack so 72 degrees if you compare that to you know a lot of race bikes but that translates into sort of more stable handling off-road when it’s quite loose

Underneath you but it’s certainly racier than you know the sort of standard model If you’ve never seen one of these frames up close and personal there’s a really good attention to detail it’s very intricate so there’s loads of these nice little alligator on bikes moots logos hidden in various locations there’s one on the rear drop out here and speaking of the dropouts they’re 3d printed

Titanium and this isn’t just sort of 3d printed bandwagon gimmick which you know 3d printers everywhere these days it’s actually function so it ensures great tolerances where the hardware’s fitted so where the brake calipers fit but then also it means you get greater tolerances on the alignment

Of the axles as well so it means they’re just absolutely spot on and the welds are a thing of beauty on this bike too i don’t normally get excited about welds but i mean when you start looking at them up close they’re just oh so nice you know

Weld porn don’t know if that’s a thing let’s start it So moving into the middle of the bike here we’ve got the bottle cage mount so you can see i’ve got two bottles fitted there’s actually boss mounts on the bottom here so you can fit a third bottle i’m not doing that because the gravel epic well the first day is about

100 kilometers and the next day is a bit shorter than that and two bottles is fine because there’s feed stations as well so that should suit me and then if we’re looking at the bottom bracket it’s threaded into the frame this is also a great thing about alloy frames is

You can just have that round section and then just thread it and get perfect alignment and the bottom brackets actually a different standard to what you used to so it’s gravel plus now before you start bemoaning like the use of oh yet another bottom bracket standard there’s a good reason for this

So it’s slightly wider the spindle is slightly wider than a standard uh sort of shimano bottom bracket and this allows the chainstays to be slightly wider and that means you can get more tyre clearance in the frame so it’s officially rated up to 45 millimeters on the route rsl i’ve got 43 millimeter

Tyres in here but i mean there’s bags of clearance i think you could certainly get bigger ones in and if you went down 650b well you’d get something massive in there So i mentioned the tyres are a 43 millimeter and they’re pannaracer gravel kings they’re what moot’s supplied with the bike and they’ve got a file tread on them now i wasn’t sure of what the gravel was going to be like here in valet so i actually brought a pair of

Pirelli cincheratos with me that had a big chunky tread on them in case it was a bit looser or a bit muddier but this does seem to be the tire of choice a lot of other people here are using file tread tires so if you came and did

An event like this that’s what i’d recommend and in terms of pressure that i’ve got running in them it’s around sort of psi but that’s because the gravel here is very fine so that’s quite a sort of high pressure for a tire like this but you know the gravel is so fine there’s

Just plenty of grip and you want that sort of higher higher rolling um and they’re mounted onto the nvg 23 wheels which are absolutely gorgeous and they’ve got envy’s special sort of carbon hubs on them as well um when psy rode a bike later she had chris king

Hubs but these ones have got the envy ones on so i’m keen to see what these ones sound like so it’s free up sound check time let’s check it out It’s not it’s not as dare i say it as gravelly as the chris king not as buzzy it’s like a finer It’s nice mighty smooth i like that So moving to the cockpit and in the front of the bike we’ve got an absolutely gorgeous chris king headset i mean it’s headset pawn and then we’ve got this proprietary moot’s titanium stem which is beautiful again just really nice welds on that it’s just a really nice piece of machined titanium

Very nice indeed and it’s 100 mil long so it’s quite short now normally i like to run a longer stem but moot specifically sort of has designed the bike this is a size 56 to be used with sort of shorter stem deliberate thinking has gone into that in terms of

The implications of how it will handle on the gravel they want it to be responsive um and twitchy but stable on the gravel and um yeah it’s uh it’s an interesting choice to go down then on the bar itself that’s an envy bar again and it’s an aero section but it’s a

Gravel specific one because it’s flared and it’s 44 and a half centimeters wide if we go from the center of the hoods to the center of the hoods then you may have noticed this out front mount this is a 3d printed silke out front mount but it’s especially done for

Moots because it’s got the moot’s alligator logo on riding a bike and then i’ve got my wahoo bolt slotted into that it’s all very neat and tidy i’m i’m a big fan and then obscuring the beautiful moots logo badge is actually my race number for the grable epic event so i’ve

I mean it’s gravel but i just can’t stop being trying to be aero so um i’ve wrapped it round in an aero fashion as as i’ve got to practice what i preach haven’t i i’ve also got my my root sticker for the first stage uh stuck on

To the top tube as well so i can see where the feed stations and stuff are too then we’ve got the carbon fork at the front this is proprietary uh carbon fork and then you can see the disc brake rotors we’ve got a 160 at the front and a 140 at the rear

My saddle of choice is a cellar italia slr boost now this has kind of become my uh kind of like go-to saddle i just fit it on all my bikes including my time trial bike actually as well i’m just a really big fan of it and i’m getting

Really well with it however this one’s got titanium rails dave guest is gonna he’s gonna love this anyway uh it’s fitted onto a proprietary moots titanium seat pin um and that’s actually got the anodised sort of camo finish on it as well which is carried on

Throughout the bike so on the down tube we’ve got the moot’s load with this really cool anodized finish it’s on the stem and it’s also on the stays and it’s on the seat tube as well here moots offers a variety of different finishes

But i i’m a big fan of this i think it looks really cool In terms of group set you may have noticed the bike’s got a full shimano grx di2 groups on here so we’ve got the the shifters here with the special shape and the servo wave brake tech in there um and then the chain set itself is a 48

31 two by set up and that’s paired with an 11 34 cassette so 31 34 is my bailout gear and unashamedly i’ve well i’ve ridden the first stage on this bike and i’ve used it a lot uh there’s a few sort of very sort of short sharp ramps where

That comes in real handy and you know riding on gravel it’s a bit harder sometimes than when you’re just riding on a nice smooth tarmac so sometimes going a bit slower than you would on tarmac and having those easier gears it really does help onto the cranks themselves i’ve got my

Off-road pedals which are look extract racers so that’s what i tend to use off-road and i’m pairing those in my off-road dmt shoes now being a full titanium bike it is a bit heavier than a carbon bike but titanium has other qualities as i’ve mentioned so the frame set comes in at

1300 grams and the total biteway is around eight and a half kilos so not the lightest but you know it’s designed to have other qualities uh in mind um you know there’s a big emphasis from moves on on the ride quality and the handling of this specific bike Well there you have it the moot’s route rsl i hope you’ve enjoyed this look at the bike and don’t forget to check out the video of me riding it over on the main channel and uh if you think that every bob ross painting would have been

Better if there was a titanium bike in the foreground um give this video a thumbs up and share it with your friends don’t forget to subscribe