Upgrading Tamland 1 with Shimano GRX?

After +30 years of being a dedicated road rider, I thought I’d give gravel a try. I quickly learned that I love the change, as I’m not fast anymore, but can still ride for hours. 

I have a LeMond tete de Course (fabulous) road bike. 

For gravel, I have a Raleigh Tamland — which I selected a few years ago because of Ted’s review. The Tamland has been terrific, and I have been riding most of the time over the last 2 years or so.

My Tamland has FSA cranks with Shimano 105 derailleurs With TRP Spyre brakes. They work great, but I have been thinking seriously about replacing the drive train with Shimano GRX controls, cranks and derailleurs, and perhaps brakes. I have already swapped wheels with a set of Hed Ardennes.

I welcome any feedback: is the Tamland worth an investment in GRX?

I assume you have the older model with a steel fork, 50/34 crank, 10 speed 105 5700 drivetrain? Problem #1 here is that your bike has post mount calipers, and GRX is flat mount, so on top of the already high cost, you'd have to replace the calipers too with an older Shimano flat mount model.

I would suggest as a start doing a re-cable with compressionless housing (e.g. Jagwire KEB-SL brake), and replacing the brakes with TRP HY/RDs. I am running that on my Tamland with 105 shifters and it works really good. I think you can still get the HY/RDs for like $130 / pair with rotors on eBay.

A nice upgrade for your drivetrain would be the GRX400 rear mech (10 speed) with an 11-34 HG500 cassette. See how that works, then look at getting a sub or super compact crankset based on your needs (at least if you get a smaller crank, you can just size the chain down too if needed).

Zurichman wrote:zen even my  Roker had to have other calipers put on it to convert to GRX. My LBS called Shimano and they told him which calipers to buy. Seemed no problems after that.

Zman