Mountain Bike Reviews Forum banner

need road style, mech disc compatible levers..which ones?

2K views 14 replies 8 participants last post by  seely 
#1 ·
I have a 26 inch bike that serves as my 29er for commuting and racing. I want to put a set of drop bars on it for the triathlon season and I need mech disc levers that go with road bars.

2 questions
1. Will my mtb stem fit drop bars?
2. What roadie levers work with mechanical discs?


thanks
ganze
 
#2 ·
drop bar brake levers

2 answers
1. Some drop bars are 25.4mm at the clamp (like a mtb bar) - limited sellection.
2. Dia-Compe 287-V: a road lever made for V brakes, most mechanical DB require the same cable pull as a V.

My 1 questions
1. What 26" wheeled mtb also fits 29" tires?
 
#4 ·
Are you aware of the Avids?

Avid has a model of their mechanical disc brakes that are supposed to work with short pull levers. This would mean that you could use them with standard road brake levers, and would just need to find some old cantilever levers to run on your MTB handlebar instead of long pull V-brake levers. Excel Sports Boulder carries them.
 
#5 · (Edited)
Ganze said:
My 1 questions
1. What 26" wheeled mtb also fits 29" tires?
Not trying to split the fine hair here but any bike that will accept 29" wheels will have plenty of room for 26" wheelsets. 26" frames can accept 700c rims with say up to 30c tires depending, which is the market that Mavic targeted with their Speed City wheelset. All options of course utilizing disc brakes.

Assuming you already have your discs and they are'nt the Avid road models, the Dia-Compes that Dave A suggested should work. They won't take care of your shifting though.
 
#7 ·
Yup, Avid road discs

Hey Guys. Yeah like Dave A said, I run the Avid road discs which work phenomenally.

Bigwheel: Ganze's frame is a 26", but it was built with clearance for larger than normal tires and has slightly longer chainstays as well which is why he can squeeze a 29er in there (from reading your post it sounded like you thought he had a 29er and were surprised by Dave A's question of "what 26" frame would accept a 29" tire"). I may have misread your post though.

Jason, to sum up your options:

25.4 drop bar with the Dia Compe levers (like Dave suggested), bar cons, and the Avids you already have (MTB).

-or-

1 1/8" road stem, 26.0 drop bar, Shimano STI shifter/brake combo, and Avid Road discs.

-or-

Either of the above combos with aero bars (if they are allowed in Tri) with shifters on the ends.
 
#8 ·
Relevent experience here (long)....

ganze,

I've got some experience with the setup you're trying to get. I had a disc brake equipped Gunnar built with the intention of running both 26" and 700c road wheels. I thought I'd designed the perfect all 'rounder style bike. Afterall, the circumference of a 26" wheel with a 2.1 tire is pretty much equal to that of a 700c wheel with a 23c tire. I decided I would build a couple sets of disc hubbed wheels, equip the bike with drop bars, then have the perfect do-anything bike. While it worked from a technical perspective, it wasn't a very good bike. Here's why...

For one, the high bottom bracket height, combined with the longer wheelbase, made for an ill-performing road bike. To take any turn at speed, I'd have to slow way down. The back end was unpredictable and when I'd hit any sand on the road, I'd begin to lose it. Of course sand is any road bike's enemy, but it was worse than usual on my Franken bike.

Off road, the bike was pretty good. I live in Indiana and it handled the flatish off roading pretty well. However, on any significantly steep climb, it was hard to get over the bars far enough.

As far as equipment goes, I set it up with Avid mtn. disc brakes and the Dia Compe Vbrake levers on drop bars. The drop bars I used were the Bontrager cyclocross bars that have a 25.4 clamp size. As far as I'm aware, they are the only 25.4 clamp drop bars presently available. They're real comfy and I use them on my cyclocross bike too. Ritchey makes some road bars with a 25.8 clamp that I'm pretty certain would work fine too. In fact, I have a set of 44's I'd be happy to sell you.

However, I had considerable difficulty getting my brakes to work properly with the Dia Compe levers. Once braking was applied, I couldn't get the Avid's to release and it seemed I was always riding with some drag on the brakes. I think the problem was a combination of 1) the use of Avid Flak Jacket brake cables. They were great for sealing gunk out of the cables, but they created lots of drag. 2) The return springs in the Avid disc brakes aren't as strong as regular Vbrakes and they don't want to return to the "open" position as readily as Vbrakes. 3) I also used cyclocross style top bar levers which probably also added drag. 4) Cable routing. On drop bars, the cables have more twists which further add to friction. Anyway, these things contributed to poor braking. I never experimented with changing any of these things but switched to Vbrakes and my problem was solved.

I've posted a picture of the bike in it's "road" trim. I think you can see that it looks a bit awkward with it's high BB. I would imagine that going with even larger wheels would have further exaggerated the high BB problem. If you'll notice, 29er frames have much lower BBs than 26" frames. BTW, I had a Cannondale Bad Boy and switched b/w 26" and 700c wheels with the same handling troubles.

I've ridden a Surly Karate Monkey with both road and off road wheels and it is, IMHO, a clearly superior bike. It won't ride like a road bike, but it's close enough that I'm happy with it. It rides off road better than my cyclocross bike. If you're looking for only one, do-it-all bike, a 29er with two sets of wheels is MUCH better than a 26er with both sizes.

Good luck and have fun.
 
#10 ·
Thank you for making it clear Tony

Tony Montana said:
Bigwheel: Ganze's frame is a 26", but it was built with clearance for larger than normal tires and has slightly longer chainstays as well which is why he can squeeze a 29er in there (from reading your post it sounded like you thought he had a 29er and were surprised by Dave A's question of "what 26" frame would accept a 29" tire"). I may have misread your post though.
I guess I was just trying to get the situation clarified and I was actually agreeing with DaveA. To my mind if a bike fits 29" wheels it is a 29"er....although I am no stranger to the concept of frames built for over size 26" wheelsets like this one



that also will accomodate the 29 tires, in fact the predecessor of this bike that was built around the 26 Snowcats was the first time I saw this occur. But neither of the bikes would have made any sense as a road bike no matter what.
 
#11 ·
Ganze said:
I have a 26 inch bike that serves as my 29er for commuting and racing. I want to put a set of drop bars on it for the triathlon season and I need mech disc levers that go with road bars.

2 questions
1. Will my mtb stem fit drop bars?
2. What roadie levers work with mechanical discs?

thanks
ganze
I use only dropbars. Two of my bikes also use Avid mech discs. My Matt Chester SS with mtb discs and Dia Compe 287V levers. The Adventure Bike with road discs and Ultegra STI levers. Both work very well. No cable drag. I use full length housing, teflon coated cables and do not run the housing under the bar tape.

You need to use a different stem for road drops. There are a few Ritchey stems that work with both 25.4 (mtb) and 26.0 (road) bars.
 
#12 ·
Thanks for the help guys

I already run 29ers and also road tires on 700c rims, as well as 2.25s on Rhyno lites. I ride this bike when I am doing the urban assault thing, dirt jumping, mountain biking and epic long distance stuff. It is also my Tri bike with the road wheel set up. What it does best is technical singletrack and jumping but it's great with all the other stuff too. I just want a drop bar this season for my tri racing.

The deal with the wife was the custom bike ($$$$) had to do it all. It does it all well enough for my skill level.

Looks like the Dia Compes are my best option for now, as well as trying to find a 25.4 bar

Thanks
ganze
 
#14 ·
Great to hear from you as well.

Glad you like the bike, it sounds like you're really putting 'er to good use. I did a quick search of our suppliers and found that Dimension and Nitto offer 25.4 bars in various widths. They are fairly inexpensive and any shop that uses Quality as a supplier would be able to get the bars and Dia Compe levers from them. If you have any trouble let me know and I can order them for you.
 
#15 ·
Bigwheel said:
Not trying to split the fine hair here but any bike that will accept 29" wheels will have plenty of room for 26" wheelsets. 26" frames can accept 700c rims with say up to 30c tires depending, which is the market that Mavic targeted with their Speed City wheelset. All options of course utilizing disc brakes.

Assuming you already have your discs and they are'nt the Avid road models, the Dia-Compes that Dave A suggested should work. They won't take care of your shifting though.
Actually, Paul's V-brakes work great on a bike designed for 26" wheels when you're running 700c so I imagine they'd work fine for a 29" wheel as well. They have a lot of vertical adjustment... several guys at work run them on their 700c converted bikes.
 
You have insufficient privileges to reply here.
Top