Road on a Mountain Frame

trailtreker

New Member
I've seen (on various web sites) mountain bikes converted to road use. By this I don't mean riding a mountain bike on the road, but rather what modification was made for it to be better suited to the road whether it be components such as different tires or a complete different wheel set, etc.

How many here have done this? Would love to hear the success stories, and how you went about the transformation (hard or simple).
 
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gtluke

The Moped
i keep my set of stock wheels with a set of geax street tires on them so that i can keep up with my roadie friend. he rides his mountain bike during the winter with the same tires so i almost have a chance of keeping up. i should make him ride with his velocorapters :)
 

elzoller

El Guac-Oh
enough of my ugly mug on this site :p
But here you can see a Nashbar MTB frame with cheap wheels off ebay.
The bike rides like a dream. It is not mine, my buddy put it together as a rail trail/road/spin around the block kinda bike.
Disc brakes and everything ;)

he used some parts he had, the only new stuff is the wheelset (off ebay)
And I gave him that handlebar :)

Pretty simple transformation if you are good at fixing bikes and stuff (which I am not :()

IMG_11361.jpg
 

bonefishjake

Strong like bull, smart like tractor
Team MTBNJ Halter's
The short answer is not a whloe lot. I put road slicks and a new saddle on my mtb and rode it on the road like that for almost ten years. I did "serious" road rides on it for a year and at times would easily put 30 or 40 miles on it. One thing that I would recco is a set of bar ends to change up your hand position and give you a little leverage when climbing.
 

Allamuchy Joe

Not White House Approved
JORBA.ORG
I've seen (on various web sites) mountain bikes converted to road use. By this I don't mean riding a mountain bike on the road, but rather what modification was made for it to be better suited to the road whether it be components such as different tires or a complete different wheel set, etc.

How many here have done this? Would love to hear the success stories, and how you went about the transformation (hard or simple).


But, but, the roadies will scoff at you. You won't even get a look, let alone a little hand wave. :)

If you are going to get new stuff for your current bike (wheelset, tires, bar ends, etc), you may just want to look at getting a used road bike. Nothing fancy -- a low end road bike will ride a lot better than a mountain bike on the road. The road bike would be a lot more comfortable for road riding.

I bought a Giant OCR 2 two years ago and I love it. The geometry is designed for long distance riding where you don't get out of your saddle very much. To me, it feels a lot better than a mountain bike's geometry in the same road conditions. If I ride my mountain bike on railtrails or the road, my butt tends to bother me, as I am not moving around a lot. When you mountain bike, your body is very dynamic because you have to negotiate uphills, downhills, rocks, roots, etc. On the road, you are realitively stationary in relation to the bike.

I have a buddy who just started commuting into work on a bike. He was going to modify his old mountain bike until he tried out a road bike. After he tried it, he bought it. He said he is very happy with this choice of the road bike.

That's just me, though. But in my opinion, the road bike will afford you the comfort of the geometry and the speed you will eventually want.
 

Mike679

Active Member
I've got the whole mountain bike on the road thing going on. Trek 8500 with a heavy Marzocchi coil fork, disc brakes, Shimano 636 DH pedals (the red ones), and a Thudbuster seatpost. Basically threw a pair of slicks on it and that was it. Gotta get some bar-ends, though like Jake said.

Can't say that bike's a joy to ride on the road, but lets me get some miles on the road when I'm short on time or the trails are muddy.
 

al415

Banned
Unless you are getting a windfall of donated parts, I'd just change the tires. By the time you've changed much more than tires you could have picked up a cheap - used road bike at a flea market / yardsale etc.
 

ellbiddy

Active Member
One thing to note is that when I changed to slicks to commute on my road bike, my bike was a lot lower to the point that I'd occasionally have pedal strike issues if I would spin through a turn, this never happened with my knobbies so you might want to take that into account or just not spin through turns :p
 

Allamuchy Joe

Not White House Approved
JORBA.ORG
Unless you are getting a windfall of donated parts, I'd just change the tires. By the time you've changed much more than tires you could have picked up a cheap - used road bike at a flea market / yardsale etc.

Actually, the Lehigh Valley Velodrome is having their semi-annual swap meet on Saturday, Oct 11th. People have tons of used bikes for sale there.

Here is the MTBNJ thread about it:
http://mtbnj.com/forum/showthread.php?p=92055#post92055
 

THATmanMANNY

Well-Known Member
slicks on mtb... go for it

Took me forever to find an appropriate thread to insert this but here it is...
Reading this months Mountain Bike Mag came across a part that quotes Liam Killeen (some respectable british pro racer, never really pay attn but I've def heard of him before) saying that on the road he switches to slicks and rides his mtb. He continues to say it's important to your legs and body to not switch positions.

Although a road bike offers a different ride than a mtb, I think he makes a valid point. Any adjustment that affects any contact point will affect your position. IMO it would be near impossible to get your road and mtb settings to match each other and the position you ride the roadbike isn't the position you would ride the mtb. My hypothesis is that this would work different muscles. However, they may work similar areas its not the same exact area. I thought this was interesting since alot of members would argue don't get slicks for your mtb just go get a road bike. So I hope this podium pro racer will restore some faith in your mtb with slicks so you can train harder and get faster! I still got them :rolleyes: So it's okay if you're not avg'ing 20mph+ on your road rides. You are saving yourself a few hundred to thousands of $'s and still working toward the same goal :)
 
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