Originally Posted by
bikemig
Old mountain bikes of course make excellent touring bikes and have been used for that purpose by a great many people. The gearing is very good for touring and they have room for fat tires and fenders. There are lots of ways of mounting touring gear on bikes to deal with the chainstays being generally shorter than on touring bikes (although the first gen mountain bikes from the early 80s often had long chainstays).
Some old mountain bikes make okay touring bikes. Many don’t. By 1993, the geometry was rapid changing towards making mountain bike much better mountain bikes. I’m not sure how you deal with mounting traditional touring gear on a mountain bike to solve the shorter chainstay problem since there really isn’t any way to push the bags further back to avoid heel strike. Yes, you can use bikepacking gear but bike packing gear is a recent invention (about 2007) and has its own issues.
But longer chainstays don’t just make heel strike less of an issue. The longer chainstays of a touring bike serve another purpose of putting more of the load ahead of the axle making for a more stable ride. Short stays puts more of the load further behind the axle which makes the bike less stable. The tail starts to wag the dog.