just bought a Trek 820 and...
 

I purchased a Trek 820 with an 18 inch steel frame for $20. It's a good size for me, considering I'm 5'9. Overall the bike is in good condition. Anyways, I wanna convert it into a touring bike. It's outfitted with eyelets and has a wheelbase of 42 inches. Swapping out the stem and adding bar ends doesn't appeal to me. I wanna install drops with bar end shifters. I took a stem/drops off of my Raleigh I'm fixing up and put them on the Trek. The reach felt good, but maybe need a taller size stem. Maybe you guys can give me some advice. I have pictures here. Thanks in advance.

Couple thoughts,

1)You will have to run friction for your front shifter unless you change your front derailer as the indexing for bar ends will pull the wrong amount of cable.

2)I know little about touring but I don't think I'd trust that old alivio/altus/acera (can't remeber) crankset for anything serious. At least replace the BB.

As far as components go, they'll be replaced. Also new wheels, tires, saddle, etc. Some may suggest just to get a brand new touring bike. But I wanna fix this one.:D

Did you try the bars with the original stem? If you feel cramped, get the same sort of stem with a longer reach. Perhaps the best move is to have the folks at your LBS work with you on that.

$20? That's a good deal.

The stem I tried is 100mm length, 150mm height. Pretty small considering what kind of riding I'm going to be doing. Maybe somewhere in the ballpark of 130mm [L] 225mm [H]. Anyone know who makes good size quill stems?

Nitto

Cool project! I'm planning to build up a specialized rockhopper frame as a tough all-purpose/touring bike with drop bars. So I'd be curious to see how your conversion goes. I'll look for more updates from you. =)

Try Harris Cyclery. They have the Nitto brand which are forged aluminum. The largest is 225 mm (H) x 120mm (L). 39.95 .

any updates?

I have a trek 820 and would like to set it up for touring.

I just bought an 07' 820 hard Tail 21" Frame last night, the 25th, today, less than a mile away from home ending my 13 mile commute from work, I CRASHED,..... HARD.. I'm 39yrs old, 6'4" 275lbs,and man that sidewalk stinkin hurt at 20mph! Not to mention my brand new bike got banged up, well anyway, I going to ride 30 miles tomorrow hurting or not.
I want to set it up for touring , I sort of know what to get for it as I'm relatively new to touring, but should I honestly go with the drop bars that I see so often on tour bikes? I think I want to stay with the standard mtb bars. For sure it needs fenders and panniers, plus as extra cargo room, a trailer.
I really think the major change should be the cassette, I'm positive a tour cassette should be made more towards pulling up long hills, and bustin a** down hill.
Anybody have a good suggestion as to maker and teeth count a touring cassette should have? I'm all ears! Fhttp://www.trekbikes.com/us/en/bikes/mountain_hardtail/820/820/

I just built up my Trek 800 for touring. You can check it out here http://www.bikeforums.net/showthread.php?t=470537

Please disregard this transmission. Halthane was responding to the fact that mtb and road front derailleurs have different cable pull ratios. What he does not understand is that all modern bar end shifters, and the overwhelming majority of all that were ever made, are friction in front, even when the rear is indexed for whatever number of speeds. And so will work with any front derailleur.

This may or may not be an issue for you, but I happen to prefer touring with drops that are wider than were found on vintage roadbikes. If you've got a vintage Raleigh, the bars are probably 38-40cm wide. My touring bike, which is a similarly drop bar converted Trek 930, has 46cm Salsa Bell Lap cyclocross bars equipped. I love them. The extra width and 12 degree outward splay gives significantly better leverage for managing loads, climbs, and anything offroad. Keep in mind, you've still got a mountain bike here, and it would be a shame to deny yourself access to fire roads and trails just because the steering is too jittery.

Another advantage of the Salsa bars for mtb conversions is that they have a very short forward reach. Since mtbs have longer top tubes than road bikes, this allows you to continue to run a standard length stem and not wind up with too much reach to the drops. This also means that, for an equivalent drop position, the tops of the bars are father forward, a place where I would feel cramped running normal drops with an extremely short stem. Of course, since you say you're happy with the present reach, such a setup might end up being too short for you.

Dunno what your attitude is on upgrades. What you've got is perfectly serviceable as is. Be careful not to get sucked into to replacing everything if you don't know what you're doing; you'll spend a pickle and probably be worse off than if you'd just bought a Randonee. I bought my 930 as a frameset and built it up fresh with a mix of old components and new. Ruthless scrounging on eBay, at REI used gear sales, and in the dumpster of the bike nonprofit enabled me to build a bike for $700 including fenders, racks, panniers, and aerobars, at a component spec generally superior to anything you could get at the store for less than $2000. However, as you lack my mother's often embarrassing genes for frugality, I can almost guarantee you will not have the same success. But if you've got a few bucks to spend after putting on drops, barcons, and racks, the best places for further improvement would be wheels (36 spoke, double wall rims, shimano hubs), new cables/housings/brake pads, possibly saddle (you don't need a brooks, just something that fits right). Have fun!