Awesome post! I am partial to giant and the revolt one looks absolutely outstanding! a little out of my intended budget but I figure if I spend a little more then I wont bug my wife for more money later. HAH

[QUOTE=KonAaron Snake;16498701]I'd go a little differently...

I'd buy an older rigid used steel MTB (or ti if I could fine one affordably) - a quality one. Trek 970, Steump Jumper...like that. Cantilever brakes.
Go to a used shop or co-op if you have them in your area...they have a variety of inexpensive stems to get the position right.
Gary bars...or Dirt Drops if you want to splurge.
Bar end shifters, Suntour Commands, or STI - doesn't matter.

Sell the bike you have or keep it as a back up - which ever.

Price - should be doable, complete and with labor, for well under $800.

Inspiration:

http://www.bikeforums.net/showthread...ar-Conversions

Here's mine - perfect do it all bike!=QUOTE]


Good Idea. I have an 88 stumpjumper project thats just sitting waiting for me to stop being lazy. Where are your shifters? shifters always trip me up mentally as far as which I can use

[QUOTE=talan8484;16500273]I went with Suntour Commands - they're a little tricky. The friction mode only really works if you remove the ball bearings, and getting them to work with Shimano isn't easy. I finally talked to a mechanic who changed the cable routing to replicate Shimano pull and it's worked well. If you can find 7sp accushift Suntour, you're in heaven (until you need a Suntour freewheel). It's worked well for me, but I'd go a different route if starting over.

http://i936.photobucket.com/albums/a...7/IMG_0728.jpg

http://i936.photobucket.com/albums/a...7/IMG_0730.jpg

I just forgot how to count. I don't know how many bikes I have.

The problem we have is the tandems - the rest can all live in the basement, but the tandems take a lot of real estate. I'm a lucky man, as you know.

How about this?
http://tucson.craigslist.org/bik/4307232031.html

Get new 32mm tires, have the bike shop go over it once, and you're set. If you chose to sell your Escape on CL you could just about break even.

Cheers! OK, so one more thought: really, it sounds as though you know what you want to do with the bike, and you want drops. The Revolt seems a no-brainer; it will cover everything the Escape does, and has drops and discs. What more? Get the Revolt if it fits/you like it, flip the Escape (it's not old) to part-cover the purchase price -- done. You've got a quality new bike that does exactly what you want at not too big a loss.
Not shilling for Giant, though I like their bikes; it just seems to me such an obvious choice -- budget permitting.

PennyTheDog is right; look on CL, you will probably find something quite suitable.

KonAaronSnake is right: convert the mtb you have. Instead of SunTour Command shifters, consider spending your new-bike budget on a pair of RetroShifters (retroshift.com)

But before doing that, walk into Performance and test-ride the Scattante while it's still on that great sale. I am personally biased against Scattante because it's a Chinese bike with a fake Italian name. But if that doesn't bother you, I bet if you rode it around the block once or twice and ran the shifter through the gears, you would find that criticisms you have read are not things you can actually feel yourself.

If you want a new bike then I'll say this one more time, I disagree about the Scattante due to the low level Sora components, the Bikes Direct Gravity Zilla has superior components over the Sora stuff. You can easily assemble the bike yourself if you get the Bikes Direct assembly DVD with mini tool for just another $25 and about an hour of your time. The bike doesn't come completely disassembled! All you do is take off all the packaging material, put the wheels on, attach the handlebars to the already attached to the bike stem, attach the pedals (making sure the R pedal is on the right side and the L pedal is on the left side), insert the seat post with the seat which is already attached to the post, then air up the tires. The DVD will take you all through this, it will take about 20 minutes to take the packaging apart and roughly another 1/2 an hour to watch the assembly portion of the video, and another roughly an hour to assemble using the mini tool you get. Plus the DVD has other repair stuff on it, it's like having a repair manual, I don't know how good it is because I never seen one but I would assume it's more than adequate. Then when your all done assembling it you take it down to your LBS and for another $30 to $40 they will go through it and make sure it's all adjusted properly (which the Bikes Direct factory does that but sometimes it's not exactly right).

When I assembled my bike it took me longer to get all the packaging material off then it did to assemble the bike, it took 45 minutes to do it all. Think about it a bit more before you leap into something lower end due to fear.

I would be embarrassed to take a new BD bike to a bike shop for initial adjustment. For some reason I would be less embarrassed if I took a used bike in for adjustment, but I don't need to do that anyways as I am mediocre enough with wrenching.

I'm sorry that makes no sense to me, but it's your thing so you have to do what you're comfortable with. The LBS isn't going to care one way or the other, they repair all sorts of bikes from Walmart stuff to Colnago stuff, so they're not going to be snickering at you behind your back unless the bike shop you go to are snobs and they don't like people who ride on bikes worth less than $5,000! A lot of people who buy bikes from BD take their bikes to shops for initial adjustments all the time...you wouldn't be the first one.

paying them money for their services solves that ..

LBS out here gets Boxed used bikes shipped ahead for touring riders
to have ready to ride when they Fly and Bus out to the coast ..

Its income to keep the doors open the other 3/4 of the year.
during which biz is slow , now.. so this is the Ideal time for a quick turnaround.