notfred

I have a bike that's really kind of a mountain bike with 110psi tires, but I keep calling it my "road bike" because I put it together entirely for the purpose of riding it on roads. I have a mountain bike, too, but I jsut use that for actually mountain biking on off-road trails. The only time my mountain bike gets ridden on pavement is when there's pavement on the way to the trail. It has big fat tires and it's slow on asphalt.

So, I built the 'road bike' out of mostly old mountain bike parts, but aside from the flat bars, I really think it feels a lot more like a road bike than it feels like a modern mountain bike.

Here's the bike:

Mtn Mike

Yeah, I'd say you pretty much have a road bike. I'm sure that if you looked at road "racing" bikes, i.e. most bikes sold as "road bikes", you'd find a few differences such as geometry oriented to a more aggressive posture, lighter (yet less strong) frame tubes, higher gearing, drop bars of course, lighter components, and hopefully a certain "finesse" to the performance. There are plenty of snobs out there that believe that road racing geometry is the only way to be a real roady, and be fast on the road. In fact, I know plenty of people that ride non-road bikes like yours and do just fine keeping up with the euro-trash titanium bunch. Still, I bet you'd notice the difference if you demo'd a decent quality bike with a road racing build.

Mr.Endo, Esq.

Call it what you like. I admit to bouts of acute confusion, but imo a road bike should probably have a road bike frame, road bike wheelset, road bike brakes, road bike components, road bike bars and road bike stem.

Hanzo

I always considered a road bike to be a bike with 700c wheels. There's a lot of permutations of any bike but that's just my personal measuring stick.

roadgator

if it works for you, who cares if they call it a shaved wombat?

jlin453

What about smaller-framed road bikes that use 650CC tires.

velocipedio

a road bike has 700c or 650c wheels, relatively thin, metric-measured tires, drop handlebars [or aero bars as in tt bikes], road-style brakes [no cantis or v-brakes] and is ridden in a fairly agressive, aero position. end of story

if it does not meet these criteria, it's a hybrid, a cyclo-cross bike, a touring bike or a mtb posing as a road bike.

oh... is it monday? i thought it was sunday...

khuon

I wouldn't put much stock in wheel size as a distinguishing criteria. As others have mentioned, there's 650C roadbike... there's 29" MTBs. These compare to 26" MTBs and 700C roadbikes respectively if you consider just wheel size. Also, you can't really use tyre width as a qualifier either since some MTB tyres are as thin as the wider road tyres.

velocipedio

a road bike has three essential characteristics:

1. drop/aero handlebars
2. skinny tires
3. road brakes

end of story.

if it doesn't have those, it's just a wannabe. if you want a road bike, get a road bike. otherwise you're a tourist or a dirtbag without dirt!

H23

My definition is far more permissive...

Its a "road bike" when you ride it on a road.

Ebbtide

Ride on, Brother!

You have a street bike, a road bike is, well, a road bike.

borg

I actually like that...a street bike. Although you can call whatever you want...The only issue with your 'Road Bike' is you are disadvantaged going on rides with other road bikes.

jstream

What about the guy who I see on the bike trail everyday? 3 speed cruiser, sitting bolt upright, twiddling his thumbs, helmet on backwards, and oh yeah... Tooling along at 23mph (measured by me).

Dahon.Steve

What he created is a more aggressive hybrid or "street bike" in the same regard as the Jamis Coda or Bianchi Strada. I think those bikes would be more aggressive since his bike has the thicker tubing of a mountain bike while still retaining the same gearing.

Flaneur

Most touring is done on road bikes.

Old-style "English" three speeds are road bikes.

A lot of commuting is done on 700c wheeled road frames; with or without drop bars, they seem like road bikes to me.

In essence, a cross bike is a road frame with a higher BB and longer wheelbase, with knobbly tires.

I'm not enamoured of micro- distinctions, but then, I've raced touring frames, toured on MTB's and commuted on TT bikes. I also ride a fixed delivery cycle and a fixed cyclo-X bike.............

lala

So a touring bike is not a road bike?

Portis

I'd say that bike is closer to a road bike than it is to a mountain bike. ONe thing that hasn't been mentioned and really would make that bike inferior to a road bike is the gearing. Mountain bikes have much lower gearing, and if you are in good cycling shape you will probably be able to find places where you can "spin out" that gearing. IOW, you would be out of gears and your legs would be going as fast as they can go.

This would also make you slower than someone on a road bike. So to add, a road bike typically has road bike gearing.

khuon

To be honest and stigma aside, I'd say what you've created is probably best described as a performance comfort bike. However, I'm really liking the term "street bike". Add a rack, panniers and some fenders and you've got the makings of a great commuter.

Metro

What about Time Trial bikes. Some of them have 600C tires. I think of them as specialized road bikes.

What about Cyclo Cross bikes (Road geometry with off-road tires/gearing)......Track bikes have simiar components (except for the absents of deraileurs and brakes, the geometry is virtually the same)

Bolo Grubb

I agree with this, but also would ask "does it matter?" if you pedal it, then it is a bike.

BigBrooklynLou

Amen.

Sawtooth

Notfred, I road a very similar bike all through grad school and found it to be plenty fast. I did have trouble keeping up with the guys on the 700c wheels, however. Maybe it was psychological, but it just did not feel as fast. It was plenty fast for commuting and the occasional 20+ mile ride, however.

My "real" road bike is much faster and gets me out of the wind better.

allgoo19

"Road bike", "Mountain bike" are more like marketing terms. It's easier for the company to direct the consumers(specially uniformed) attention to what they make. Ask 100 person and you get 100 different ways to use and different needs. As modern bicycle evolves, there will be many more bikes that won't fit in either category. The company will invent some more new terms.

wagathon

If the bike is full-framed shocked, or has any shocks, has tires that are more than 28mm or maybe 32 for touring (i.e., more than ~1-1/4" - 1-3/8"), has bomber-type tires or knobby tread, and if you cannot get down into an aerodynamic position (e.g., into the drops) in a headwind, then it is not what I think of as a "road" bike, i.e., the bike may be the perfect compromise, depending on the preferences of the owner, but it has too many trade-offs in its setup and design to make it an efficient road machine.

Steelrider

Technically speaking, it isn't. But that's only because classifications make it easier to group bikes based on specific characteristics. For instance, when I hear the term "touring bike", they will generally have sturdier frames to handle heavy panniers, braze-ons for same, more stem rise for a more upright position, beefier rims/more spokes to accommodate the load, wider tires for a smoother ride under load, triple crankset, etc.

My personal opinion is that classifications like this don't really matter unless they are guiding you to a specific feature set that makes it easier to group and evaluate choices. If the bike you ride, from a feature standpoint, does exactly what you need it to do, then categories don't much matter. I'm pretty much in the "if you ride it on the road, then it's a road bike" camp. Categories just communicate to others some commonly understood characteristics to save the trouble of enumerating them one-by-one. Other than this, I'm not sure why it matters.