Originally Posted by
mrleft2000
Woah now, the slightest bit of modification of a MTB and we're ready to call it an ex-mountain bike or hybridized or a city bike (see post 15 followed by post 18, which by 90's standards would still have been sold as a mountain bike) but you want to call touring bikes and cyclocross bikes as road bikes? Talk about a double standard. No I'm not going to sweep everything that isn't a pure mountain bike into the road bike category. A cyclocross bike does not get to be called a road bike because the adaptations it has, why the bike design even exists, are so it can be ridden in the mud not the road.
I've put drops on a MTB. I wouldn't call it a slight modification.
It took me quite a while to figure out how to get good shifts on the top pull front derailleur with a brifter. Also, since MTB geometry is different, getting the right stem to go along with the drop bars required a bit of thought.
Touring bikes ARE road bikes. I've never heard anything different. You can make the argument that CX bikes are their own beasts but I contend they're just specialized road bikes. I think a lot of early cyclocross bikes were nothing more than modified road bikes. Put cyclocross tires on a touring bike and BAM, instant cyclocross bike.
I'm not saying that a mountain bike becomes a road bike the instant you put drop bars and slicks on it, but it begs the question, what makes a mountain bike a mountain bike?
The same bike I put drops on is a bit unusual in that it was a 90's MTB with 700c wheels. That fact right there makes some people want to call it a hybrid, though it definitely wasn't. It didn't sell well because people didn't like the idea of 700c wheels on a MTB back then and there wasn't much of a good tire selection.
Because 130mm spacing was standard at the time, I can throw my modern road racing wheels on it. So is a 90's rigid MTB frame with Campy ErgoPower shifters, 18 spoke wheels, and 23 mm Michelin Pro Race 3 tires still a MTB? Don't know.