Budget road bike vs decent mtb

[anglais49]

That's great, thanks for the advice all.

Another question, where would you suggest buying second hand bikes? I've had a scour of eBay and Gumtree and there seems to be precious little available, particularly in my area.

Is there any sort of specialist www.buysecondhandcycles.net website I'm not aware of?

 

[Kins]

You can check with your local councils that have bike recycling projects as well. You never know what they get given from the tips/police.

 

[youngoldbloke]

Have you looked at Preloved?

 

[Electric_Andy]

Just general road riding. The gearing, obviously, would improve since I often run out of gears on the road on the Rockhopper. Aside from that, it's just how the two would compare. Weight, stiffness, feel, etc. Yes, they're two completely different tools, but when they're being used for the same job they should be comparable? But having never owned a road bike before, I have no frame of reference.

I used to have a Carrera MTB which was a fantastic budget bike for off road, though at 17kg was very heavy. When I found I was enjoying road riding more, I put slick tyres on. I then got rid of it and got a £200 road bike which weighed 9kgs. These were my times on a 22 mile journey which was very hillyconsidering my fitness didn't improve much throughout):

MTB with knobblies = 2hr 50
MTB with slicks = 2hr 40
Road bike = 2hr 20
Electric assist bike (MTB style and 25kg) = 2hr 20

Basically on the lighter road bike I could accelerate MUCH faster, it was more comfortable after the initial transition to drop handlebars, and flat speed much higher. Also on the road bike the effort you put into the pedals is transferred to the back wheel more efficiently, but that would maybe not be an issue if you had good groupset on your MTB. Downsides to the road bike - not many apart from not having disc brakes. In my opinion get a cheap road bike to see if you like the riding style, it is very diffreent to a MTB. I got my roadie off e-bay - sometimes there's loads for sale and other times not as many, just have to sit and wait for a bargain.