Touring Bike vs. Rigid MTB

[Bike_Peanut]

I've been tossing around the idea of purchasing a Trek 520 or Trek 920. I like the components on both and I want to have one all purpose bike. My bike is my main form of transportation, so I'll take this bike everywhere. I like the fact that I can load front and rear panniers with gear and have the proper gearing/braking for the job. However, my quandary is this: should I purchase a new touring bike or re-purpose my old Trek 4300 MTB? My 4300 has a rear pannier rack and the front (rigid) fork is set-up to mount a front rack. Therefore, I can easily add front and rear bags to the bike. The three main draw backs to the Trek 4300 is 1.) 26" wheels 2.) 1 x 9 drive train and 3.) rim brakes. Am I being overly picky or is there value to purchasing a touring/adventure specific bike?

Thank you for your input.

 

[raleighnut]

Nah, convert it to 3x9 with a Deore crank/front mech and put some better quality wheels on.

 

[Ming the Merciless]

^^^^^ this

 

[Heltor Chasca]

I respect @raleighnut and @YukonBoy immensely, but I beg to differ. Go new. Disc brakes will change your world.

I don’t get your beef with 26” though.

 

[Bike_Peanut]

I respect @raleighnut and @YukonBoy immensely, but I beg to differ. Go new. Disc brakes will change your world.

I don’t get your beef with 26” though.

It's not so much a "beef" with 26" wheels, they do the job well. I ride 700c wheels on my daily commuter and I like the taller wheel size.

 

[biggs682]

It's not so much a "beef" with 26" wheels, they do the job well. I ride 700c wheels on my daily commuter and I like the taller wheel size.

You might find some of the older non suspension mtb's might take a 700 wheel

 

[12boy]

There are plenty of excellent tires for 26. See Compass tires for example. The wheelbase of the 920 is between 107 and 110 cm depending on frame size, and is a low trail bike. This gives you a smoother ride and more neutral handling with a front load. On the other end of the scale a real track bike will have high trail and short wheel base, making it handle more nimbly and accelerate faster. Even more so, my minivelo is 93.5 cm, about 6 inches shorter, with 20 inch wheels. It is very twitchy but ideal for threading in and out of traffic. I couldn't find the wheel base and trail on the trek 5300 but if you measure it you can get an idea of how it stacks up to a touring bike. One of my strategies when I owned just one bike was to have more than one wheelset for the bike, set up with different gearing and tires. For the price of the bike you can buy a lot of wheels. Snowy? pop on some studded tires with lower gearing. Cruising around on dry streets, some light slick types. Doing a little unpaved riding, some cyclocross. The same bike with purpose suited high quality tires can be surprisingly good at a lot of things. The current trend to gravel grinders illustrates the value of a longer wheelbase bike which can carry some weight and will fit fairly large tires.

 

[Bike_Peanut]

There are plenty of excellent tires for 26. See Compass tires for example. The wheelbase of the 920 is between 107 and 110 cm depending on frame size, and is a low trail bike. This gives you a smoother ride and more neutral handling with a front load. On the other end of the scale a real track bike will have high trail and short wheel base, making it handle more nimbly and accelerate faster. Even more so, my minivelo is 93.5 cm, about 6 inches shorter, with 20 inch wheels. It is very twitchy but ideal for threading in and out of traffic. I couldn't find the wheel base and trail on the trek 5300 but if you measure it you can get an idea of how it stacks up to a touring bike. One of my strategies when I owned just one bike was to have more than one wheelset for the bike, set up with different gearing and tires. For the price of the bike you can buy a lot of wheels. Snowy? pop on some studded tires with lower gearing. Cruising around on dry streets, some light slick types. Doing a little unpaved riding, some cyclocross. The same bike with purpose suited high quality tires can be surprisingly good at a lot of things. The current trend to gravel grinders illustrates the value of a longer wheelbase bike which can carry some weight and will fit fairly large tires.

This is excellent advice; thank you for your time and expertise. I agree that $2,099.99 buys a lot of tires!