Flat Bar Conversion & 8sp - 9sp

UncleFred

My girlfriend has just grabbed at Trek 1000 for a bargain but doesn't like the drops.

I've just upgraded my MTB to XTR so I have a bunch of spares lying around so I'm going to convert her bike to flat bars.

Plan to:

Swap 8 speed cassette for new 9 speed Ultegra cassette
Replace Rear Der. with old Deore LX from MTB
Replace front Der. with new Ultegra Triple that I have

Question is will my old Deore LX Shifters work the front Ultegra Der and will the Deore Rear Der. fit on the Road Bike hanger and lastly will the regular calipers work with flat bar brake levers (not V-Brake)

meagain

Question is will my old Deore LX Shifters work the front Ultegra Der - I THINK in theory no, but worth a try?

and will the Deore Rear Der. fit on the Road Bike hanger - can't se any reason why not.

and lastly will the regular calipers work with flat bar brake levers (not V-Brake) - yes.

alfablue

My g/f got a drop bar bike and said she didn't like it, but we persevered, now she doesn't want to change. You might get a more upright position for her with a change of stem, the whole conversion thing is quite expensive. It may be cheaper to sell it on and buy a flat barred bike, but maybe just spend a bit more time on the bike first.

What is it in particular she doesn't like? Is it operating the brakes? That made my g/f nervous, but we adjusted the brake lever reach (and I taught her the right hand holds and techniques), and she's fine now.

Al_38

I think a road front derailleur should work with a mtb shifter if it is a triple - I certainly run a sora rear mech with a mtb shifter on my hack.

As to brake levers, I think shimano make some specific flat bar brake levers for road dual pivot brakes. They will work much better than v levers. Or if you have a set of old lx / xt / dx levers that you can change the cam on they should work okay too.

ride_whenever

i'm with alfablue, she probably doesn't like the stretched out position. Get her some CX levers so she can brake from the flats, and soon she'll be beating you up the hills!

UncleFred

I'm doing it with parts I already have lying around apart from the Bars & Brake levers. If the front Ultegra derailleur wont work with the MTB shifters I'll use the LX deraillueur i took off my MTB.

The day she beats me up a hill is the day I sell my bikes and take up fishing.

Rezillo

I've done the opposite conversion and was using a 105 front derailleur on a Tiagra triple with 440 flatbar shifters, which is as it came built.

If that worked, then I guess anything's worth at least trying.

As an aside, when I converted to drops, I replaced the 105 front derailleur with a Tiagra one, which is sort of a downgrade but I wanted it all to be compatible straight off as everything else was Tiagra. It was the first time I'd done anything like this and I didn't want to end up fruitlessly adjusting something that would never work. I could not see a scrap of difference, apart from the label, between the 105 and Tiagra front derailleur! They even weighed the same.

John

maddog 2

rear mechs - mtb and road shifters are interchangeable

front mech - road mechs need road STI shifters or R440/R770 flat bar shifters

but... if you run a double road mech (and double chainset obvioulsy) then you can get an mtb shifter to work fine. The shifter wants to overshift but you can set it up to not do this with the limit screws.

I've got a pair of R440 shifters (9spd) which will be going on ebay soon. PM me if you are interested.