wvridgerider

I built my old Karate Monkey as a drop bar mountain bike, what a fun bike. Anyone else do this. Very versitile

Miele Man

There's an entire thread on such bicycles. LOTS of similar conversions. Thread started in 2012 and now has 6,931 posts in it. Enjoy.

https://www.bikeforums.net/classic-v...nversions.html

Cheers

craig_dahlke

Yes, highly recommend checking out the drop bar mtb thread- lots of great info and rad builds.

Rolla

A drop bar mountain bike isn't the same as a Monster Cross, or at least it wasn't when the term was first coined.

History and interview here: https://www.cxmagazine.com/monster-c...-dirt-drop-bar

zandoval 

It has always amazed me how much change in a ride can be made with modification to your bars. As I have gotten older it is even more exaggerated. I test rode a straight bar bicycle a few months ago to help with adjustments. WOW! It was uncomfortable, almost painful...

269523

What kind of bars would you recommend for increased comfort instead of straight bars? I'm building up a hybrid and could use ideas!!

zandoval 

This is actually a hard question. For me personally I have used nothing but Drop bars since the 60's. I rode nothing but road bikes. I even participated in Cat 3 racing when I was stationed in Italy in the early 70's (very humbling). So me and my body are Road Bike Drop Bar conditioned. So now, almost 50 years latter, using anything else is hard.

About 8 years ago I noticed that due to my back injuries and osteoarthritis I was hardly ever in the drops. My seat was a little lower and my bars a little higher. I was watching some movie about guys tearing about the city on fixie's with Bull Horn bars. That was the ticket for me. I have been using Bull Horn handle bars since.

Take a good look at what your physical abilities are and what you have been ridding. If your bike normally comes with drop bars keep them for awhile. There are even mountain bikers using drop bars now (I wonder if they were road bikers before). At my house when my son's come home they fight over a step through sleeper bike I have with moustache bars.

So what handle bars would I recommend, this is actually a hard question...

Badger6

I remember reading that article a few years ago after a friend mentioned "monstercross" and I was intrigued enough that I went googling. Rereading it, I was struck by this quote:

"Monster cross is a bike designed to fill the gap between a cyclocross bike and a mountain bike. A true do-it-all bike that rides singletrack, pavement and gravel well. Key features are rather simple: tires between 38-45mm tires and dirt drop handlebars."

Bold parts for emphasis. What was monstercross in 2018 (and before) is now just a standard gravel bike. Back then, gravel bikes were generally either CX bikes or "endurance" road bikes with 32mm tires, treaded and without. Fast forward to 2021 and my current year Diverge, and many others, are now standard with 38mm tires (I toy with the idea of 42mm when I wear out my current tires) and of course drop bars, and depending on rider skill can be as much fun on single track as they are on pavement and forest roads. Seems that maybe gravel merged into and subsumed monstercross, while CX stayed distinct?

Rolla

Yes, because cyclocross is an actual sport, and the bikes are governed by UCI rules. “Gravel” and “monster cross” are just words that mean whatever anyone wants them to mean.

Badger6

I probably should have been clearer. I can distinctly recall a time in the mid 20Teens, before anyone made up the word monstercross (that I am aware off), where it seemed gravel bikes were just CX legal bikes with relaxed road geometry (Original Diverge was Roubaix geometry with space for 35s, and the Focus Paralane was actually an endurance geo road bike with space for 35s). In fact, as I recall, squeezing a 35 into a "gravel" frame was about as big as one could go on any of those early "gravel" specified frames. The influence of a few frame builder (brands, really, from the US) pushed gravel into the wide tire realm and they subsumed the "monstercross" wide tire builds as well as the mullet 1x drivetrains.

Of course, CX would stay "defined", because of the UCI. I probably shouldn't have brought up the CX discipline/class, except to say that the current gravel craze started on CX bikes, but it didn't stay on them for very long, because CX geometry os pretty aggressive and not conducive to the kinds of riding the gravel culture embraced.

Rolla

Agreed on all counts, although I’d wager that an awful lot of gravel bikes are bought by people who could just as comfortably (and perhaps more efficiently) do their “gravel” riding on a ‘cross bike. I own both, and I seldom go on a ride whose terrain demands one over the other. .