Touring bike building advise wanted

Alison

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I built my husbands touring bike with flat handle bars and XT components throughout and I've built road bikes with Ultegra road parts, but my son has asked for me to build him a touring bike with drop bars, would I be best sticking to road components throughout or is it OK to mix say XT with road STI's ?

Thanks

Alison
 
best to use a road front mech with road shifters, but other than that, all should be reet. Except 10 speed stuff, but that's just silly.
 
Re:

IIRC you'll be OK except for the front mech, which will need to be a road one, not mountain.
Different chainline and cable pull, apparently.

All the best,
 
Danson is right, but there are get-outs.
You can get MTB front mechs to work with road shifters. The simplest was is to use a bar-end or down tube shifter.
If you are determined to go with STI, then you can correct for the different cable pull by clamping the cable on the wrong side of the bolt on the front mech. It helps if you file a new groove for the cable to sit in.
 
Or you could just use (for instance) a 105 triple groupset.
And not have to muck around with odd cable pulls.
In on road applications, there's no real benefit to using mtb gear *unless* you want incredibly, almost silly low gears.

You can get (iirc) a 1:1 ratio on the 10 speed triple (30 front, 30 rear) not sure what you can get to on the 9 speed stuff.
 
Pricey, but the ShiftMate 7S is an inline roller specifically for running road shifters with MTB front mechs:

shiftmateStraight1.jpg


Instructions here.

SJS Cycles, £40: http://www.sjscycles.co.uk/jtek-shiftma ... prod19045/
Around $40 in the States.

All the best,
 
mattr":2a6vryh6 said:
In on road applications, there's no real benefit to using mtb gear *unless* you want incredibly, almost silly low gears.

Depends on how heavy your touring is. 1:1 is just about OK with a camping load provided you don't have really long climbs.
 
Re:

Tiagra & Sora comes in long cage rear derailleurs, triple cranks, and three speed front sti shifters, but if you aren't going with a 34 low gear in the back (i.e. a road cassette like a 12-2:cool: I would go with a sub compact triple crank like those made by Sugino or Velo Orange. As mentioned previously it all depends on how much gear he will be hauling. The standard Tiagra/Sora is probably ok for light touring and places with rolling terrain.

If you are going with STI's you will be limited to road mechanical discs, mini v-brakes or cantilevers on the build. The bar end option seems to be preferred by the hard core tourists because it tends to be bomb proof.
 
hamster":35q7u98v said:
mattr":35q7u98v said:
In on road applications, there's no real benefit to using mtb gear *unless* you want incredibly, almost silly low gears.

Depends on how heavy your touring is. 1:1 is just about OK with a camping load provided you don't have really long climbs.
well, yeah. Self supported alpine touring will need silly low gears, so as mentioned ^^^^^^ you swap your standard triple chainset for something from TA or similar, which will take ridiculously small chainrings.
Personally speaking, for road touring I'd always try and keep the cassette to a sensible size (12-27 or something) with sensible jumps, and shrink the chainrings. Not being able to get the right gear (always being over or under geared) is a pain on a 5 minute climb on the mtb. Spending an hour hunting between two dinner plate mtb sized sprockets is enough to drive you mad!
 
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