I found this thread is really interesting n useful and inspiring to me make me thinking of building up a touring bike and go out there. But none in this thread talked about bike set up appropriate for touring. When we buy a full bike for touring we should never get nervous about the set-up but how if we want to make minor up grade for instance, or collecting the parts and build up a touring bike ourselves because I saw some use full road bike drive train or full mtb drive train and some use a mix combination of mtb-road ones. Using full range of road drive train or mtb on touring bike is out of question but when I saw a bar-end shifter (road) or dura-ace down tube shifters work with xt rear deraileur and mtb 44-34-24 chain wheel I'm very curious.. are they compatible ? Please anybody with this experience fulfill my curiousness...
