Originally Posted by
avaserfi
I always thought there would be some differences in gearing between the two types of bikes, guess not. We already have lights and such for night riding.
There is a difference in gearing for sure - road bike have higher grears (go faster but harder to pedal).
Originally Posted by meanwhile
There are, but they're irrelevant. At a reasonable rate of pedal rotation an MTB will top at about 35mph - if you have that much leg strength and don't mind arriving wherever you are going soaked in sweat.
The OP said one problem was maxing out of gears for part of the ride. It would stand to reason that higher gearing might help.
And the 35mph is just crazy talk. I haven't gone over 35mph on my *road* bike at any point, and I have run out of gears several times.
To the OP - I honestly just though of this - sometimes people only shift with the rear gears. Do you know about shifting through the front gears? You probably do - just a question.
Originally Posted by meanwhile
Other than pedaling harder there are two ways to make a bike move faster on the flat (assuming your suspension forks have lockouts) - Reduce air resistance...Reduce rolling resistance by using faster tyres.
If the OP hadn't said that a lot of their route was hills, this might be more relevant.
In general I don't totally disagree with you on the flat. Less weight helps on the hills though.
Originally Posted by meanwhile
pick up replacement rigid (ie non suspension) forks cheaply at an LBS or on ebay. You should be able to fit them yourself, but if not a local mechanic shouldn't charge much.
I did a search for "Giant Boulder". The first result that showed up was $330. In comparison, the cost of a replacement fork and installation may be significant in comparison.
On the other hand, for $400 you might just be getting a bike that's equivalent to what you have now. So replacing the fork might do just as well.
Originally Posted by meanwhile
An alfine internal hub would reduce maintenance
As I mentioned, in my opinion this is not the way to go. Also - owning one, the supposed benefits of an internal hub with a chain are *highly*, *highly* overated. If you want low maintenance, an IGH with a belt seems like it might actually be less maintenance by removing the chain (the biggest source of maintenance) from the bike.
Originally Posted by meanwhile
and disk brakes would improve braking in the wet - assuming you had tyres with good wet grip to make use of them. Otoh, kool stop salmon brake pads will improve wet weather braking a lot and you can fit them to your current bike for $20.
I generally agree. Disc brakes are certainly "nice", though not necessarily "necessary".
Originally Posted by meanwhile
This is ridiculous: the speeds these people are riding at are far below those needed to max out their gears. Being able to get to 45mph on a descent is priority for a racer, but not for a commuter!
The Cross Check is a cyclocross bike strictly speaking - so referring to it as a road bike is a little misleading as it is designed to be ridden off road. As another poster already suggested, Bikes Direct sells cross bikes from $500.
Drops are good for riding into the wind if you don't mind the *very* low position - depending on traffic you might not think it wise to use them, as doing so reduces your ability to look around very substantially.
But switching to drop bars to increase commuting speed for a 6 mile commute??? Not terribly sensible. Especially if money is tight and bikes aren't enjoyed as toys.
What's rediculous is your assertion that a mountain bike will max out at 35mph. I don't know what it is offhand, but the threshold is much lower than that. If you've been reading the threads lately, you've seen several people say that being in excellent biking shape they can keep up with roadies on their mountain bike (not all the roadies, but the middle of the pack usually, or just people who aren't in as good of shape as they are) - but they run out of gears. And since the OP mentioned running out of gears, yeah, I think that might be a problem (though running out of gears with a 13mph average does seem odd).
And what's misleading is trying to say that the crosscheck is designed as an offroad bike. It isn't. It is almost exclusively used as a commuter. Even the Crosscheck page says "What does all this mean to you? Options, kid, that's what. Get yer freak on. Gears? Great. Single-speed? No sweat. Commuter? Touring bike? Grocery getter? Bring it on. Or build it as a bonafide ’cross bike and race it. It likes it."
Seriously. It's practically the stereotypical commuter frame/bike. I don't know that there's a single person who even uses it for cyclocross racing, but if there is they are vastly outnumbered by the number of people who use it for commuting.
Regarding drops, I wouldn't say the position is "very" low. Not with an "endurance" or "relaxed geometry" frame like I suggested (like on the Crosscheck, or the Specialized Sectuer). Actually - I can't think of anything under $2k that actually comes with handlebars lower than the seat - what you're talking about is usually reserved for high-end, racy, expensive bikes.
Using bike with drops makes looking behind you more difficult, but certainly not nearly as impossible as is implied. Half the people I know commute on road bikes, myself included.
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Starting with "6-7 miles one way that takes 25-35", that's 6.5 miles in 30 minutes, or 13mph. When you take into account hills and wind, that's a pretty typical speed. If a road bike brought that speed up to 15mph, that's 26 minutes. That doesn't seem like a whole lot, until you realize that 4 minutes each way times 10 times a week is 40 minutes a week you would cut off the commute. And 15mph is the safe bet. You could see 16mph average (though that's more the best-case scenario). That's 24.375, or 5.625 minutes each trip, or 56.25 minutes each week - about an hour a week.
However, just to contradict myself, if you have a lot of stoplights it's much more of a mixed bag. When a decent part of that average speed is waiting at lights, that time spend sitting there won't change no matter how fast your bike is.
I think we've really covered everything so far in the thread. For $400, you aren't getting much of an upgrade. For $800 or so on a new hybrid, you're getting a nicer more reliable bike with better shifting and such, but not really much faster. For that same $800 you could get a road bike, and an $800 road/cyclocross bike is about as fast as you're going to get, even if you spent a lot more money. It would probably 2-3mph average faster vs a mountain bike with slicks (though less so if you spent much time at stoplights). The biggest concern with a road bike is the tire clearance - room for fatter tires if you decide the ride from the skinny tires is to harsh, and room for fenders.