Originally Posted by Chad953

Bought my first "real bike" - a 2016 escape 3. I plan on looking at road bikes sometime next summer, so intended to do some tinkering with this one to learn about the hardware. Make my mistakes on the cheap stuff I guess?

A project I'd like to do is to upgrade the tourney drivetrain to a deore (or equivalent?) set, but given the 7 speed rear and lack of disc mounts, I'd be looking at v-brake sets. Not looking to buy a new bike, I'd rather use this one as a project/learning bike and commuter for the future.

Being newbie to non-huffy bikes, this is my learning project) I'm not completely clear on which groupset or components I'd be needing for the conversion. Most of the sets I'm seeing include disc brake hardware rather than the v-brakes and I'm not sure what components from the larger sets I actually need for this bike (3x10 vs 2x10, hubs? Etc)

My rides are 5-25 miles on pavement of varying quality or light packed dirt in park paths. Using the stock wheels and tires (700c 32). Sometimes I pull a dog trailer with 70lbs worth of dog in it so I'm sure that will affect the set I'd be looking at.

Thanks for any advice!