Evening folks,

Keep seeing all the lovely bikes that have been built up by people and want to have a go myself.

I have an old reasonably spec'd mtb and would like to use that as a donar bike.

In my mind I'd like a commuter sort of bike that could handle the rougher stuff too.

I'd also like drop bars on it, something like the midge from on one. However, the shifter I have are mtb shifters.

So, can I simple swap those to road style levers, or will this not work at all!

Thanks
Drew

I have a feeling that SRAM road & mtb shifters are interchangable but Shimano are not. I've got Deore/Slx mechs on my Fargo using microshift bar-end shifters. The next hassle is making sure your brakes & levers play nicely together.

You can do it, but it's not straight forward.

SRAM is easy - straight swap as the 1:1 actuation ratio is used on bith road and MTB shifters.

If you want to use Shimano road STI levers you need to match the shifters to the front mech as a front road STI pulls less cable than an MTB one. If you use bar end shifters it's easier as the front shifter is friction only so no problem with indexing.

The rear is a little easier - Shimano road STIs work with MTB cassettes and derailleurs just fine, with the exception of the new 10 speed Dyna-Sys - here you can use a 9 or 10 speed road rear mech instead.

Brakes are more tricky - road brake levers don't pull as much cable as MTB ones, so you need to either use the correct brakes (cantis, mini-Vs or road discs) or a Travel Agent to change the cable pull. You can get V brake levers for drop bars but they don't have the gear shifters built in, so you have to use bar-end shifters. You can't get road levers that operate hydraulic brakes (yet) but you can get adaptors like the TRP Parabox or Hope V-Twin that takes a cable input and converts to a hydraulic output. You could bodge hydraulic MTB levers onto midges.

You also need to be careful about the position of the bars - MTBs are longer than road bikes, so just swapping risers for Midges will put you too low and too far forwards. You'll probably need a short, high-rise stem to get the bars in roughly the right place. The primary hand position on Midges (or Woodchippers, Cowbells, Luxys, etc) is in the drops, so you need to try to get that part of the bar in the same places as the grips on your MTB bars.

I run Shimano levers with a Deore RM and its fine. Interesting point about the FM (I didn't realise there was a difference). I had thought the dodgy shift was due to poor set up, guess its off shopping for a road mech I go.

Keep toying with the idea of a V-twin but better to blow the cash on wheels or cranks

You can also get BB7s in a road set up so they work with road levers (correct cable pull). TBH, they work so well the only reason to change to hydro's would be weight saving.

chris n wrote:Brakes are more tricky - road brake levers don't pull as much cable as MTB ones, so you need to either use the correct brakes (cantis, mini-Vs or road discs) or a Travel Agent to change the cable pull.

You can also get a few drop bar levers that are specced to work with mountain discs - I run Cane Creek Drop V levers with BB7 Mountains on my bike and they're cracking. A little more time-consuming to set up than some, but they work stunningly well. There's also Dia-Compe's 287v that do the same, and the Tektro RL520 (which are pretty much identical to the Cane Creeks)

As for gears, I've got Ultegra 8-speed bar end shifters running with a Deore rear mech and an SRAM X-Type on the front. Both work really well, and having the option to either index on the rear or run as friction shift is nice if things aren't set up 100% perfect.