Originally Posted by
Epicus07
I'm not an expert in mountain bikes. My understanding is that mountain bikes are made of heavier tubing so they can withstand off-road forces. The geometry is different (things like higher bottom brackets for clearance) longer chainstays? which greatly affect the handling and steering of a bike. The wider tires have more contact with the road so they increase resistance slowing you down. They also typically use flat bars which dont allow you to get low and out of the wind and i personally feel much more confident going down a big hill at high speeds of i can brace myself in the drops when i'm braking.
Take a nice racing bike for a test ride at your LBS. For commuting you would probably want something more cross or touring oriented as they allow for racks and fenders etc but for test rides, why not experience the difference.
Yeah i hadn't put much thought in the handle bar design. I definitely need a rack of some sort eventually to carry my back pack as right now i need to bring a spare shirt because my shirt gets soaked on my back and shoulders from the back pack. I've seen a few different setups people are using on this forum that aren't too expensive. Fenders are not really a concern right now as i pretty much only ride when it is nice out, i like commuting but i don't have to, i'll just drive on the days it isn't so nice. In the future that may change.
Now to update on the state of my current bike. I took some WD-40 and oiled the heck out of everything working it into the gears and such. This didn't help. So i took the right hand 7 speed shifter apart, squirted more WD-40 in there. Ended up kind of grabbing it and forcing it into 6th and then 5th gear as well as just jiggling things around trying to unstick anything that may be stuck but still could figure out precisely why it it wasn't working. So i put it all back together thinking maybe by manually turning the gear it may have did something. Well turns out it did. It down shifted through all gears flawlessly. However, when i went to up shift it up shifted to 2nd and then would do nothing and could feel the lever wasn't "catching" as it pushed freely. So i took it back apart and noticed a small spring wrapped around a lever on the up shifter that wasnt wound up tight. So i tried to wind it up tight the best a could, did a little more jiggling and put it back together. This worked! It now shifts up and down all 7 speeds very smoothly and flawlessly. The spring still seemed a little worn out, so it may eventually need replacement, but you wouldn't know it the way it's shifting now.
I didn't get to this until late evening so at this point i ran out of sun light and didn't get to try to fix the left hand 3-speed side. I also noticed yesterday that the front brakes were not stopping very good and assumed they were just wearing out. Well while lubing the bike today i noticed one of the front pads is missing entirely! So will certainly be needing to buy a new one. Where can i buy one of these? LBS?
Quite pleased with being able to fix that shifter. This at least gives me a few gears to work with. The 3-speed shifter is stuck in 2nd. Hopefully i can fix it tomorrow.
Here's a few pics just to show you guys what i'm working with. Actually nvm image shack is acting up. I'll get pics up as soon as i can.
Got it working, here are the pics.
Guts of the shifter. Hard to tell from the pic but the spring on the left side lever is worn.
