CX or road bike?

daveb

I have £800 to spend (no more) and am stuck on whether to buy a Cyclocross bike or pure road bike. Pros and cons please?

Use:
Mainly road commutes (18 mile round trip) and road training rides (Up to 100 miles or so), no off road but some bridleway. loose stuff. I already had two FS and a HT so they cover my off road requirements.

Thinking road would be best but CX may be better as a lot of the roads are pretty chewed up. Top of the list at the moment is a Boardman Road team, I also looked at the hybrid team but thought it was to similar to HT to justify the cash. I havent looked at any CX bikes yet.

Thanks

Barrie_G

If the roads are very poor condition, or there are fairly large stones on the loose stuff then I'd go with the CX simply for the increased clearance that the fatter tyres will give you.

Both types of bike should cope ok with what you're describing, so you need to see if you want to go with the larger tyres to help offset rim damage to your wheels.

In practice you wont find that the CX bike is much slower than a pure road bike, I went through the same thing the back end of last year and bought a CX bike, but got sick of the canti breaks squealing like a stuck pig, having to keep adusting for toe in etc that I upgraded to a Enigma Eclipse. I now don't bother with the bridalways that I used to ride and altered my usual routes to miss out on the worst bits of road and don't regret it at all, and I've now got proper brakes that don't make me wince everytime they're applied.

HTH

acorn_user

Sounds like a touring bike would fit the bill nicely, or an audax/winter bike. Cross bikes are great for cyclocross, and they work fine for road riding for the most part. But touring/audax bikes were designed with your uses in mind.

Good for cx:
clearance for big tyres, can race cx (this is fun!), built strong.
Bad:
not always equipped with mudguard eyelets/rack mounts/bottle cages that you need for commuting, higher BB not needed.

I raced all my road races this year on my cross bike. But it's getting irritating because it only has one bottle cage...

Monty Dog

Most cross bikes these days come with bottle cage bosses and rack / mudguard eyes - people like them for their versatility. A bike that might be ideal for you is the Planet-X Kaffenback - has a steel frame and is very durable, with all the clearances and fittings but rides like a fast road bike - cheap too. I love my cross bike for it's versatility - fast and light enough for chaingangs and yet tough enough for offroad abuse.