Road Tyres on Mountain Bike

T30XAS

Well this is my first post here, and spent a bit of time looking round the forums. Must say some great advice, tips, hints, etc. Quickly falling in love with the site.

I have a problem though. I'm not the most advanced cyclist, i've been cycling for around 8/9 months now and love it. I have a Voodoo Hoodoo based on the review here at Bike Radar. Most of my riding is off road (hence the mountain bike), but i've been roped in to completing a 100 mile road bike ride for charity in a few weeks. Although not adverse to doing 20 - 30 miles on my bike of an evening, finding it a real struggle with the bike on the roads, mainly due to the tyres.

Can i just swap the mountain bike tyres for road tyres? Do i need a new wheel set or can i just replace the tyres? Any special considerations when changing? I also would prefer not to buy a road bike as its not something i would be doing on a regular basis.

Any help advice on this would be great, thank you.

PS. If i've put this in the wrong place i apologies!

cougie

You cant get the ultra thin tyres on - but you can get some thinner slick tyres on MTB wheels - they will be almost as fast. It depends on how wide your rims are.

Best thing you can do is go to the LBS and ask there what will fit. And get a track pump as well for the higher pressures you'll want.

porker33

I fitted michelin city slicker 26 x 1.25 to an MTB a few years ago to use as a winter road bike, it was fine, you do need thinner tubes than the 1.75-2.25 ones you use for regular MTb tyres.

keef66

+1 to what Porker said. Get some 26" slicks. I had the very same on my MTB when I used it on the road (cos that's all Halfords had). 1.25 is probably as narrow as you can get away with on an MTB rim.

keef66

Do you have 26" wheels on the MTB? Or is it a 29er? Make sure you get the right size!

T30XAS

Thanks guys much appreciated.

They are 26" wheels. I'm off to evans this evening so going to see what they've got in that'll work well with my wheels.

snoopsmydogg

before getting a road bike I used schwalbe city jets on my mtb. Not as good as a road bike but much better than nobbly tyres, can be ran at a higher pressure and pretty cheap too.

metronome

I'm running 26" 1.25 Maxis Detonators (62a) on my Scale. They're quite light and pretty fast!

Edit - they inflate to 100psi

sskelly

And if you want some lightweight offroad tyres look at Schwalbe CX-Pros.

jus71n

snoopsmydogg wrote:

before getting a road bike I used schwalbe city jets on my mtb. Not as good as a road bike but much better than nobbly tyres, can be ran at a higher pressure and pretty cheap too.

I have these on my Cube MTB, as a winter/wet/commute bike, reasonably priced too