I've restored a couple of vintage tourers and am now interested in purchasing an LHT or Saga frameset to build. Even though the vintage touring bike geometries were very similar to the road bike's compared to todays, they used the equivalent to MTB components. The current thinking seems to be to use MTB gearing ratios and derailers. I can understand keeping the gearing low, but why is MTB stuff superior to road stuff on a touring bike. Is it just tougher?