Mountain Biking - MTB vs Road Bike sizing

Hey,

I'm considering getting a MTB off the web for a pretty cheap price, but their largest frame size is 52cm. My road bike is 63cm and my current MTB is 23". I'm wondering if the 52cm frame would be OK if I were to get a longer seat post or handle bar stem? Is MTB sizing as critical as road bike sizing?

Cheers,

Dan

I suggest you get it at the LBS unless you have already ridden it somewhere else.

RR

MTB sizing is completely different than road bike sizing. You want more standover height with the mtb when compared to the road bike, so mtb sizing is smaller than you would get with a road bike.

It's tough to compare between different bike types and between different manufacturers. Read what Sheldon Brown (http://www.sheldonbrown.com/frame-sizing.html) has to say...

Measuring Frame Size

Generally, when you see a single number listed as a frame's "size" that number refers to the length of the seat tube.

A further complication is that nobody knows how to measure a bicycle's seat tube any more. Even leaving the inches/centimeters question out of things, there is the question of where the seat tube ends:

The old standard system was to measure from the center of the bottom bracket to the very top of the seat tube.

Some manufacturers have decided that this is too easy, so now many bikes are measured instead to the intersection of the centerline of the top tube with the centerline of the seat tube.

Some other bikes that have seat tubes that protrude farther than normal above the top tube measure as if they were measuring to the to the top of a seat tube with normal protrusion.

Some bikes are measured to the top edge of the top tube, even though the seat tube protrudes higher up.

Some bikes with slanting top tubes are measured as if there were a level top tube, they use the length that the seat tube would be if it was as high as the head tube.

Anarchy reigns; I know of one bicycle line that made a running change in the middle of the year. You could have two bikes of the same make, model, year and nominal size, but one was 2 cm larger than the other! The only way to know was to measure them.

An additional complication is that the height of the bottom bracket varies over a considerable range, typically anywhere from 10.5" to 13"! Thus even frames that use the same system for figuring the top of the seat tube may have widely disparate stand-over heights.

Bottom line: seat tube "frame size" numbers are nearly meaningless unless you know how they are measured!

I find virtual top tube length to be a better indicator of frame size than the seat tube length. That said, it's pretty tough to compare road vs. mtn. As others have said, you'll want to test ride something before you buy.

Heck, just buy it. How much different can it be?