All Mountain Style Frame Guard Gravel & Road

All Mountain Style (AMS) Frame Guard Road & Gravel offers plentiful protection against stone chips and scuffs. It's really easy to apply, and looks great, though it's a bit expensive.

The Frame Guard is designed and made in Barcelona, and comes in 12 parts, giving you enough to cover off most areas of your gravel or road bike, including the down tube, fork or seatstays, top tube or seat tube, as well as areas where you might get cable rub or where a tight tyre might contact the frame.

The protectors are properly beefy at 200 microns thick, and with a neat honeycomb texture which AMS says offers high impact and rub resistance, though it's light at 22g in total. It also looks and feels a little bit special. For reference, the mountain bike version of the kit is almost twice as thick at 380 microns, with a subsequent slight weight penalty.

The style on test is Sterrato, though it also comes in various other monochrome designs, including Bikepacking and Coffee, as well as a clear option. AMS has loads of designs on its website, including some amazing colour options. It says the protectors are guaranteed not to yellow over time.

Though this kit is intended for gravel or road bikes, I actually applied it to my all terrain Bombtrack Beyond+ and covered all the aforementioned areas. It took about 30 minutes in total, including the time spent cleaning and prepping the frame with isopropyl alcohol.

Fitting the pre-cut protectors was surprisingly easy compared with other protector kits I've used, and ones I've made using 3M helicopter tape, the results of which have always looked a bit, well, rubbish.

In this case, I applied them using the usual technique of working from the middle section outwards, applying lots of pressure. I didn't use any special technique of spritzing soapy water underneath first, or using a hairdryer to help them conform.

There were no air bubbles, and the pieces conformed to any bends, bumps or curves without issue. The chainstay on my Bombtrack frame is particularly curvy, needing to accommodate a 3in tyre, and I was amazed how easily the Frame Guard just wrapped around the steel tube.

Though the gravel/road protector kit is thinner than the mountain bike version, it still feels substantial enough to me. I tackled the Black Mountain in the Brecon Beacons a few weeks back and encountered many miles of very rough off-road. The frame took a bit of a battering from loose rocks, and as well as dropping the bike several times, I also had to drag it through some particularly nasty and thorny brush. The areas that were protected look untouched, while the rest of the frame has picked up quite a few scratches.

Value

At £42 for the kit, it's definitely on the expensive side – more so than any we've featured before. The Exoguard Intelligent Bike Protection is £4 less, and easy to install, though the kit we tested is designed for road frames.

Effetto Mariposa doesn't seem to make the Shelter Off-Road pack that Matt tested for off-road.cc in 2021, but you can buy rolls of its tape starting from £26 for the 58mm x 1m, and a pre-cut kit for around the same price, but there's about half as much as you get with the AMS Frame Guard kit, so I'd say the reality is that it isn't much cheaper.

The most basic option is a roll of protective tape, such as the Viking 3M Polyurethane Protective Tape, which costs £21.36 for the 25mm x 3m size and should cover at least one whole bike.

Conclusion

If you do a lot of gravel riding or bikepacking, I'd highly recommend the AMS Frame Guard Road & Gravel. In fact, I'd say it's pretty much essential if you want to keep your paint in good condition. Yes, it's expensive, and I'm not sure how much more protection you get over a regular frame protector kit, but the ease of application is certainly worth it in my mind.

Verdict

Brilliant frame protection for bikes that take a licking, that's easy to apply