What was I thinking?

Never one to leave well enough alone, I took to faffing about with my recently purchased Specialized Diverge, & fit larger 700x35c tyres to make it more of a gravel grinder kind of bike. My tyres of choice were Panaracer Pasela 700x35 with tan sidewalls (because skinwall tyres are all the rage right now, don't you know). Anyway I think there was mention made at the time of the bike purchase that 700x35 tyres 'would' fit, but it wasn't really made clear. Nevertheless, on these Panarcer Pasela tyre went on & boy did they almost not fit. The raised casting seam on the tyre tread brushed the seat tube of the bike. Once on the wheels turned without binding but I wasn't convinced. I ran a length of electrical tape down the seat tube were it comes very close to the rear tyre & when off for a ride.  Sure  enough after 20kms the tape was well worn through, so the tyres had to come off.

So it was back to the original tyres the Diverge Comp came with - Specialized Roubaix Pro 700x25/28. These Specialized tyres are actually really good, running the pressures of 85~95psi as specified on the sidewall, they roll really well on the road, but give a predicable feel on dry gravel & dirt, more than I would have given them credit for. It's going to be a hard ask to top these.

I got to mention about the ride quality of the Panaracer Pasela I fitted. Sure I only did about 30kms all up, but they really felt kind heavy going & especially out on th road downright lazy. I think this feeling above all got me to toss this whole idea of larger bodied tyres on the Diverge, & just stick to what the manufacturers specified.
Also, not sure if you noticed, but I also changed the crankset due to the stock FSA Gossamer not really offering chainrings availability, on investigation, it seemed that my run of Diverge Comps came with a limited run FSA crankset that really wasn't supported with spares. So I found a discounted compact FSA crankset that was far more commonly available & supported & fitted that instead. THis endeavour costed me $100Aust, which is pretty good as far as cranksets go.