My first XBike

Hello.

I recently completed my first MTB to drop-bar off-road/commuter and am sharing with the intention of persuading more people to dive in.

The frame I bought on ebay was a heavy af steel Mercury Millennium from I'm guessing the 90s. I kept the original wheels and brakes on as they seemed good enough for the time being.

Switched the groupset to a 1×9 shimano cues but opted for friction shifting with a microshift advent bar end shifter.

She cleaned up beautifully and has already put some mileage down both around London and off track in the new forest. Handles both very well.

Sure, there were some moments of frustration like ordering the wrong derailleur about 3 times but it was a very satisfying learning experience.

If I were to do anything differently I would probably think less about tires and more about gears and shifting. Friction is easy to set up but with so many gears so close together there's very little margin for error so shifting can be pretty fiddly.

Another note on geometry – I'm a reasonable 6'3 but you need long arms to ride one of these converted MTBs. You can see I opted for a L frame instead of XL and raised the seat and handelbars pretty much to the max, but still find the reach quite far.

Anyway – the message here is stop thinking about buidling the thing and just start building it. It's fun. And at the end you might get compliments from middle aged men at traffic lights.

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