No. 22 Drifter Adventure Long Term Review: Adventurous Bespoke Titanium

no. 22 drifter adventure review — All smiles riding the No. 22 Drifter Adventure!

No. 22 Drifter Adventure Long Term Review

“No. 22 Bicycle Company was born out of a desire to strike equilibrium between enjoyment and performance.” – No. 22 Bicycle Company

“We build bicycles for the rider who appreciates perfectly tuned ride quality as much as stiffness and low weight—the rider who loves to ride for riding’s sake. Our point of departure is frame material: we fell in love with the ride of titanium and named our company after it. We then took to the task of sweating details of fit and finish. Our frames are based on carefully considered geometries and tubing profiles. We use the highest grades of titanium tubing available, build our frames in our own production facility in the United States with our veteran craftsmen, and confidently back them with our ten year warranty.”

No. 22 Bicycles Drifter Adventure

“Starting with our award-winning Drifter, the Drifter Adventure is for riders seeking more. Additional tire clearance and compatibility for 1X drivetrains only allows the Drifter Adventure to run larger tires to take your adventures further off the beaten path.”

“A bevy of standard mounts—seat tube, top of down tube, underside of down tube, bento, rack, fender and dynamo—let you bring more with you. Subtly revised handling allows the Drifter Adventure to make the most of its capability with good on-road manners, and poise when trails get rough.”

No. 22 Drifter Adventure Review Video

Alternative Video Link for those reading via email subscription

In this video, JOM of the Gravel Cyclist crew presents his long-term review of the lovely No. 22 Drifter Adventure. This review had the bike see action in Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Pennsylvania, and Virginia. Not your run of the mill review.

JOM’s review frameset highlights the finishing options that No. 22 are so well known for. A combination of titanium finishes featuring Cerakote, polished, and brushed.

JOM’s review frameset highlights the finishing options that No. 22 are so well known for. A combination of titanium finishes featuring Cerakote, polishing, and brushed. So beautiful.

Written Review: The Riding Experience

Number 22’s bikes are out of the ordinary. We have the bespoke aesthetic that separates each bicycle produced by the company, no one production is alike. The quality of the finishing from the welds, to the polishing, the Cerakote, it’s all just visually stunning.

As a bike designed for the adventurous side of life, this bike was screaming to be run through its paces that include a little spot known as Sonoran Desert, mostly on the Arizona Trail somewhere between Phoenix and Tucson. There are some tame spots along the trail and the route I traversed, and spots where a mountain bike would be the preferred tool.

The Drifter Adventure nurtured me along the rockier path less traveled and safely back to the start, in an area completely devoid of cell service, trees, and humanoids. Crashing wasn’t an option due to the no phone coverage, and it didn’t help that I wasn’t toting about a satellite tracker. Honestly, the only limitations placed upon the bike were my own riding skills, and the relatively narrow 700c x 43mm Goodyear Zipp XPLR tires / tyres, which were supposed to measure 700c x 45mm on these Zipp 303 XPLR SW wheels.

In less challenging terrain, the Drifter Adventure is perfectly at home chugging along all day in a calm and predictable manner. I found the geometry to be a sweet mix of just enough slack to tame rougher stuff, but not to the point of being slow and wallowing, particularly if you rise from the saddle to ascend, or hit the gas on flatter terrain. The bike was simply perfect on the roads of North Virginia outside of Washington D.C., one of my absolute favorite places to ride a bike in the US of A.

Further north it excelled scaling the tough hills of Northern Pennsylvania near the town of Titusville, birthplace of the American Oil Industry and home to a super fun grass roots gravel event, Roughneck Gravel Roubaix. Further south, the Drifter Adventure lapped up a dry edition of the Laughing Donkey Invitational, a super fun, 100% free grass roots event near Tifton, Georgia. Plenty of loose conditions on that particular day. Can you say stable with a bike of this nature, riding one-handed shooting video in loose sand.

I’m still on the fence about “adventure” type geometry with a longer top tube and shorter stem, but in my opinion, Number 22 has nailed it with their interpretation, and this bike. I only hope the geometry tweaks for the 2025 model (details of the 2025 model here) are very minor. This is definitely a bike you could ride all day, and if so inclined, tackle any form of performance riding whether it be racing, or hacking about the place with a couple of mates.

Comfort on the Drifter, that’s firstly going to depend on your tire / tyre pressure, don’t forget to set that appropriately. Be sure to check out my handy suggested tire / tyre pressure chart linked here. Titanium is my preferred material for this type of cycling, it’s impervious to damage, and provides excellent damping qualities for the terrain under tire / tyre. The same applies with the Drifter Adventure, and another point about the geometry here, with chainstays measuring 440mm across the board except on the absolute largest size; comfort galore, but as I’ve already alluded to, no real compromise in performance.

The carbon Number 6 fork is part of the comfort equation. It may not show on camera, but there is enough flex happening in the right places to dull the effects of smaller bumps, and isolate the rider to a degree. It certainly isn’t a suspension fork, you could spec a Drifter Adventure with that option, but I came away after most rides without my hands beaten up, and I seldom wear gloves, unless its cold a faaaaaaark. I cannot measure for certain, but its likely the titanium seatpost and stem add a smidge to the overall package of a comfy ride.

It’s difficult to futureproof a bike in this day and age with ever changing standards and the like. No. 22 chose well with the UDH derailleur mount, which can be run with a regular derailleur and adapter. If you care to know what UDH on a gravel bike is all about, be sure to see this link. Adding to that, a T47 bottom bracket with Enduro Maxhit bearings, absolute winner right there.

All of this made in the USA bespoke quality doesn’t come cheap, but you only live once, right. The frame, fork, seatpost, stem, bottom bracket and titanium headset as you see it, will cost you somewhere around $US 10,000. If you chuck in the top tier SRAM Red XPLR 1×13 speed groupset and Zipp 303 XPLR SW wheels as soon on my review sample, you’re easily looking at somewhere around a cool 15 grand.

At this price point, the Number 22 Drifter Adventure obviously isn’t for everyone, and I’m sure there will be some outrage in the comments below. I love this bike, it’s my kind of adventure bike, and it could be yours as well.