Originally Posted by
AeroGut
A bit of a zombie thread, but I wanted to mention that early mountain bikes often had very long chainstays and make great touring bikes. For example, I have a 1985 Trek 830 “all terrain” bike with 48.5 cm chainstays. Heel strike is not a problem. . .
These long chainstay (CS) MTBs were made for a very short time (because it turns out long CS suck for MTBing), by 1987 or 1988 they all had 42.5cm CS. Good luck finding a 35-year-old bike in your size in good condition, and by the time you've retrofitted modern components it may occur to you that it would have been smarter to just pick up a used Surly LHT off eBay - a couple times a month one goes for $600-700. LHT can be found on Craigslist too.