I commuted my early years of commuting on a MTB. Now, I use it for winter, as it rides well in snow and slush and has some stability on ice. It is lighter, so sometimes it gets lost in loose gravel, but other than that it rides fine. Outside of crappy winter weather, I use it for recreation on trails and camping. I like the feel of it, and it is always like hooking up with an old friend. My other bike is hybrid, and I like to sit up on my bikes, as traffic comes from all directions and you just never know where they come from sometimes.

I ride my Gary Fisher hard tail on black top for my 34 mile RT. I have knobbies to make the ride more challenging and to sustain my fitness level. I could ride my road bike or my cross bike but they are both way to light and don't provide me the workout that I enjoy with my 45 pounder. Maybe one day when I get old (I'm 53) I'll change and put slicks on the mtn bike. :-)

Ride safe,

Jeff

I tried putting 1.5" slicks onto a hardtail I commuted on for a year or so but it seemed to be the worst of all worlds, so I branched out to 2.0" big apples and that was the sweet spot. I run them on my LHT now which is basically a glorified all-rigid mtb anyway.

Considering I ride all winter on a MTB with knobby tires, each of which has 240 bits of metal sticking out of it, I see no real problem with commuting on a MTB with normal knobbies.

I started commuting on a mt bike but switched to road after about a year. I don't ride mt bikes anymore at all but I have to say that there are moments when I miss them. For example this morning I rode on about 500 yds of chawed up road waiting for a resurface. Not the best for a road bike. In general mt bikes are definitely less efficient than road bikes but they are probably better at handling unexpected contengencies.

I used both a road and a mtb for my 24 mile each way commuter (48 miles RT). The road is 3-4 mph faster even with slicks on the mtb. Most of that is due to the more aero position.

To the poster that claims a better workout with a mtb, the qulaity of the workout has little to do with the bike - it's how hard you push yourself.

I got this feeling most folks buy MTB because of the versatile of the bike, then used as a commuter. When I was considering commuting by bike, there were many factors that lead me to start with a MTB. I bought a Walmart Schwinn MTB in plans to do my commute. No it was not for looks or anything like that. For one, it was something I can afford to buy and get stolen. I rode that thing everywhere around town to get used to not having to drive. When the darn thing started to skip gears and the rear wheel got knocked out of true, I went to shop for another commuter bike even before I was commuting.

The second bike I decided on for commuting was a Specialized Hardrock disc. Again it was not for the looks or anything like that, but rather because I needed something for commuting weekday and dirt trail weekend. The versatile of a MTB was what made me buy it. Luck has it's way and financially I was able to afford a roadbike and turned that into a commuter and started my commuting.

If my finance did not turn as it did, it would have been MTB for commute since I can take that on or off the road but I cannot take the road bike to the dirt trail.

I commuted for about a year on a Klein Adept Pro with Hutchison Gold 1.25" (32mm) slicks. The bike was an XC race bike with very short travel - 2" in back (which I ran very stiff) and 80mm in front - with a lockout.
My commute was 11 miles each way on the West side of Las Vegas, with about 800' elevation difference. The bike did great. The fork lockout and tires (and, to some degree the quality of the frame) gave the bike a very responsive ride, but it was very comfortable, as well.

100% paved route.

I ride for several miles of my commute on gravel roads which, even with my front suspension forks, are bumpy as hell for the few moments during which I'm able to work up any speed. I actually have the rigid forks which originally came with the bike but I'm not really tempted to install them. They've never been used. Once I'm on the pavement the route is all uphill (love my low gears) or down hill, where I have to coast. If I ever upgrade to a newer bike it will probably be a hybrid of some sort. Unless the local bike shop will let my test ride their Surly Long Haul Trucker on my gravel roads?....

Around this part of the woods, a MTB is the choice for
most. Low end Walmarts for the most part. I see dozens
every day, bike racks are full of them.

Does it really matter? You are riding and not burning gas
and getting in better shape.

I ride for fun and fitness, streets and paved trails, and
ride a Schwinn Aluminum Comp. With slicks. It has never
seen dirt, or grass or gravel.

My regular commuter has half slicks and no suspension. As long as it has 2 wheels I'm happy.

Aside from the knobbies, how is a mountain bike any less suitable than a true road bike for commuting?

Cons of mountain bike:
- Knobbie tires
- Suspension fork adds extra 2-3 lbs

Cons of road bike:
- No rack or fender eyelets
- Caliper brakes limit you to 25 maybe 28 mm tires
- Even if you manage to get a rack on it, it has short chainstays
- Many road bikes don't have anything close to a gear setting that's even close to a 1:1 ratio, makes carrying any load up hills difficult without getting out of the seat

I dunno, I think the problems with a mountain bike are overlook-able or easily fixable in the future. I dunno if I would say the same thing about a road bike. I am pretty much never going to buy a bike with caliper brakes simply because I refuse to be limited to 25 or 28 mm tires and there aren't any cheap ways to change out of calipers. It's quite a tragedy that so many bikes are closed off to me as well as their potential utility for simply lack of eyelets and brake bosses; it's not like they weigh that much.

Besides, if exercise is one of the reasons to commute, then what does it matter if it takes a little longer to get there?

All the cons you listed for road bikes only apply to racing bikes. Touring or Cross bikes have lower gearing, can take large tires and especially touring bikes will have as many or more eyelets than you would see on an MTB. Fender mounting tends to be more straightforward without a suspension.

The big con in my mind for MTBs is the single riding position/lack of hand positions. Not everyone cares about that obviously. Gearing and tires can be changed to suit your needs with either road or mountain bikes though there are limitations.

Of course you can put slicks and drop bars on a MTB, but you get to a point where you're not sure whether it's really a MTB any more or just a heavy road bike.

Mrleft2000, I don't think your complaints about road bikes are necessarily valid. Pretty much every touring or leisure oriented road bike has the capacity for fenders and racks front and back. It's just bikes with a serious performance setup that don't include them.

My Le Tour just gained a rack today as a matter of fact!

I've commuted on my mountain bike, and on my step-mom's hybrid, and neither is as pleasant to get around on as my Schwinn with its 25mm tires and widely spaced gearing(the freewheel is a 14/28 six speed, small ring is a 44t and the big ring is a 52t).Other than the fact that my computer mount doesn't fit as well on the Schwinn as the other bikes it is much better in all but the roughest environment.

If you live in an area with horribly decaying pavement a mountain bike with fat road tires will probably be better, but in "normal" conditions I'll take the tool designed for the job every time.

exactly. the lines really get blurred when you start putting all the parts that make a road bike a road bike (high pressure slicks, rigid forks, up-sized gearing, drop bars, etc.) on to your old hardtail MTB frame. that's exactly what my back-up MTB commuter is. it's got slicks (for 3 seasons anyway, i still roll fat knobby studs for winter), a rigid fork, bullhorns, and the largest crankset i could realistically fit on the frame (a 48-38-28 triple). it runs great and performs marvelously well as my winter/foul weather/back-up commuter, but it's still 11 pounds heavier and a couple mph slower than my primary fair weather commuter road bike.

what is this bike? (pictured below with winter studs, not summertime slicks)



it's not a road bike - too heavy (28 lbs.), longish wheelbase, 26" wheels
it's not really a mountain bike anymore - bullhorns and rigid fork
it best fits as some kind of hybrid, but even then it's still an odd duck.

Odd duck or not, that's a nice looking bike. It also makes the point that a hard tail/rigid frame makes for a versatile bike with clearance for wide knobbies if you want to go that route. Old rigid frames/hard tails are also plentiful and inexpensive. The hipster/fixie/ss crowd are inflating the prices of old road bikes.

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.

thanks.



they're even more inexpensive when you remember that you have an old one from your college days just collecting dust in your sister's garage out in the burbs that you haven't ridden in years




ditto, for bullhorns on a MTB. it took me 3 different stems before i finally got it right.

You could argue the reverse. Put touring tires on a CX bike, and you have a nice bike for touring, if it has braze-ons for racks and such.

Don't disagree. I'll admit though that I'm oversimplifying. I'm not an expert on CX bike geometry. For awhile they had higher bottom brackets but I don't think that's the case anymore. They probably have shorter wheelbases than most people would like on a touring bike, but I'm only guessing. There's also a trend toward single chainrings.

My friend has a Specialized Tricross, which is kind of halfway between a Cyclocross bike and a Touring bike. The wheelbase is shorter than a touring bike, but definitely longer than a road bike. He could also totally do a CX race with it, though the top tube may be a bit low It does have a normal height bottom bracket, and he's done a tour with it. I didn't hear anything about his hitting the panniers.

I do. My hybrid got stolen. I don't have the money saved up for the bike I want to replace it with yet. Plus I've got a couple of miles of very big ass gravel roads to ride on.

I laugh when I see people riding mountain bikes on pavements. It is like the soccer mom who buys an SUV in the south where it never snows and they never drive off-road; burning up gas for nothing.

Mountain bikes by design are clunky cumbersome machines. Their fat tires and weighty suspension is a lot to drag around. Worse yet is the riding position. The rider is forced down so the upper body weight is forced down onto single position straight handle bars which almost surely cause hand numbness.

The wide bars are like riding and parking a Texas long-horn steer. They get tangled in everything, are difficult to squeeze into parking stands, and impossible to throw into the back of a hatch-back car for a quickie ride home.

In China, the mountain bike had some short-lived fashion days back in the early '90's, but the Chinese quickly recognized how silly the design was for street riding and nicknamed business commuters "Panda" because the whites of their shirts would poke out from under their dark suit jackets at the cuffs, waist, and collar.

Of course, some guys replace the wide mountain bike tires with narrower slicks and they change the handlebars. In other words, they do as much as possible to change the mountain bike to something besides a mountain bike.

I DO sometimes ride my mountain bike on the streets when it is snowing or icy, but besides that I don't use a spoon to do a knife job. In other words, I don't ride mountain bikes on paved roads.

To clarify, I ride a no suspension mtb and I switched out the tires to slightly narrower slicks (from 26/1.95 to 26/1.75). Also, the area I ride in is 100% flat.

I ride on urban/residential roads that are in notorious poor shape. Especially in the spring after a harsh winter, some streets I ride on are not really recognizable as streets anymore, but more a dried up riverbed.

I have also a bike with 700 tires, and the tires alone are for me a big reason why I don't use it much.