Hi there! I bought this mtn bike off of someone on fb marketplace for like $100 and I was wondering if anyone could help me get started on how I can turn this into a road bike? I live in a city with lots of bike accessible roads, with some hills here and there. I know that the tires/wheels will have to go… but I’m completely new to this world and don’t know much else.
Any advice is appreciated, thanks for reading!
by hosoo2
5 Comments
Just ride it
If you find the tyres too slow get something like a wtb thickslick.
You don’t need to change anything else, it’s not really worth it.
You can’t, it’s a mountain bike. It will work fine on the road though as is, but it will never be an actual road bike like with drop bars and skinny tires and road bike geometry.
It’s not a road bike, it’s a mountain bike, but a pretty nice one from the early 90’s – people like those because they are good all-round bikes with a few modifications.
I’d definitely replace the tires with slicks to start. If it ever rains where you live, get full fenders too.
If the riding position is comfortable as-is, just use it, but lots of people put different stems and bars on these to suit their tastes.
The cantilever brakes should work fine with any cable type road brake levers, should you wish to go drop bar. The stem/headset is threaded, which is actually nice for height adjustability. Nitto makes good high-rise stems if you want to make this more of a relaxed all-round-but mostly-road bike (x-bike…)
I had a Trek 8000, probably identical geometry. It was a really twitchy, quick steering bike with a long top tube, resulting in a rather weight-forward riding stance. I bet that if you put a pair of drop bars on it it would actually be a pretty cool gravel bike.