Commuting - Need help picking a new commuter

I used to commute with a road bike, but man, those days are hopefully soon to be over. My roads are just too horrible for road-bike commuting. So I have a few questions.

Should I just keep my very old and barely functional roadie and equip it with hybrid tires? Do I need to buy new wheels in order to put on the larger hybrid tires?

Should I buy a used hybrid?

Should I buy a new "Cost-co/Wal-mart" bike


I already have a great road bike and an awesome mountain bike. What do you guys suggest me to do for commuting. PS: my commuter right now is a semi-dysfunctional front-brake-only road bike that has a ellipticalish shaped-back tire ( due to either crooked wheel, but probably not well mounted tire after getting so many flats ) I'm willing to invest about 250$.

PS: NO, I AM NOT GOING TO REMAKE THIS PIECE OF **** THAT I have as a commuter right now. I've put too much and work into it right now for it to have been worth it and I'm not keeping it up. The max I'm willing to maybe do is put new hyrbid tires on it. And if I have to purchase new wheel in order to do that, then I'll let go of this option. I'll have to put her down.

What kind of mountain bike do you have? Would you be willing to use it to commute? If you can lock out the suspension on the MTB and maybe throw a rack and/or fenders on it, it should be good.

How long is your commute?

How about some pictures of the bikes you have?

What kind of mountain bike do you have? Would you be willing to use it to commute? If you can lock out the suspension on the MTB and maybe throw a rack and/or fenders on it, it should be good.

How long is your commute?

How about some pictures of the bikes you have?



I don't have any pictures and the bike is an antique, so almost no repertoire on the Internet, but here:

http://images.google.ca/imgres?imgurl=http://www.lespuces.com/reimages/918025066189.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.lespuces.com/acnov.aspx%3Fid%3D1266189%26w%3DVelo%2B&usg=__F0yBlJ0Z1UEIvN3tGlJzR2AhXgQ=&h=450&w=600&sz=52&hl=en&start=1&sig2=nYh9Gq5zGYcENQOAaYelzw&um=1&tbnid=zBa4MvEXTDvICM:&tbnh=101&tbnw=135&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dniji%2Bconcorde%26hl%3Den%26client%3Dfirefox-a%26rls%3Dorg.mozilla:en-GB:official%26sa%3DN%26um%3D1&ei=W44oSqilJ5iclQegiJ3lBQ


It's a google image. As for my MTB, it's an awesome one, as in, I'm not willing to let it locked for a few hours outside. My commute is about 40 km there and back total, ,but one some nasty roads. Wish I could take pictures of them. I'm actually leaning to a commute with a cheap CDN tire suspension on. ( Fork )

If you can find a hybrid in your price range, that could be the way to go, but keep in mind that you might end up wanting new tires, chain, etc. I definitely wouldn't go with a Walmart bike.

Depending on how bad the roads are, I'd probably just put the widest tires that would fit on the old road bike, and maybe a suspension seat post.

I mostly use old steel 10-speed bikes and beat the cr*ap out of them. they are cheap and the wheels are cheap too.