Upgrade old road bike

pastie

I have a 10 yr old Trek 1000, buggered sora groupset and buckled back wheel but aluminium frame & forks should be ok. Is it worth spending £2-300 to upgrade for a winter hack? If so, what would the the best options be? I'm interested to do as a project. Thanks for any wisdom

jgsi

I can see you can get 105 11 speed or 10 speed groupsets for just over 300, then a set of cheap wheels..job done?

freezing77

Within budget a tiagra 10 speed groupset and a set of shimano r501 wheels from ribble about £295.ex delivery

gozzy

I'd be looking out for 2nd hand ultegra 6600/105 5600 or 9 speed ultegra/105/tiagra and hopefully wind up with a bit more to spend on wheels and some decent tyres.

Wheelspinner

Single-speed it, ideal for winter, lower maintenance. Pick an appropriate gear, get a chain tensioner, remove mechs and cables, sort your wheels and away you go. Cheap and fun.

Upgrade your legs in the process too.

arlowood

For your budget you could pick up a 2nd hand Triban listed in the classifieds with nearly new R500 wheelset and a 9-speed Sora groupset that's only done 1000 miles.

viewtopic.php?f=40090&t=13002352

You can then decide whether to dump your Trek and ride the Triban or transfer the bits over if the Triban is not the correct size for you. You could then sell on anything else you don't need.

Just another route to consider

pastie

Wheelspinner wrote:

Single-speed it, ideal for winter, lower maintenance. Pick an appropriate gear, get a chain tensioner, remove mechs and cables, sort your wheels and away you go. Cheap and fun.

Upgrade your legs in the process too.

Singlespeed? I hadn't thought of that, and like the idea. Would be a genuine n+1 project. Excuse my ignorance, but how do I convert cassette / chainring / shifters etc for single speed? Does crank & BB need replaced?

Wheelspinner

pastie wrote:

Wheelspinner wrote:

Single-speed it, ideal for winter, lower maintenance. Pick an appropriate gear, get a chain tensioner, remove mechs and cables, sort your wheels and away you go. Cheap and fun.

Upgrade your legs in the process too.

Singlespeed? I hadn't thought of that, and like the idea. Would be a genuine n+1 project. Excuse my ignorance, but how do I convert cassette / chainring / shifters etc for single speed? Does crank & BB need replaced?

You can do it pretty easily, not much required. Find a gear ratio you like from the current setup, then decide if you want to go real cheap or just cheap. You can replicate the ratio with a new front chainring and rear sprocket and get a kit to adapt your rear hub to suit, which have spacers to replace the missing cogs, or just leave the cassette there and rearrange the sprockets to get the best chain line.

You can replace the chainring bolts with shorter ones to suit a single ring. Shorten the chain and since your frame likely has vertical dropouts you may not get the perfect length, so a simple tensioner instead of the rear mech can help. Gusset make them, amongst many others, see CRC website for example.

You simply bin the front mech, rear mech, cables etc and leave the levers to run your brakes.

No need to replace cranks, BB or anything else. See link in my signature for "Fun". That's a Cannondale Caad 8 race bike converted to SS.