robinfisichella

Hi Everyone, common question i know, but i wanted specifc advise based on this bike.
Currently i have the cannondale F9 seen here https://www.cannondale.com/usa/usaeng...s/1294-0FS9-F9

I dont have the cash to buy a road bike but i want to make the road cycling a little easier. Im only doing up to 50 miles (usually less) 2-3 times a week so its nothing worth massive financial investment!

Im getting some slicks for it, but how narrow should i go, and should i get narrower rims to suit?

Is it worth upgrading the gearset? The seats, and handlebars? Or Would simply loosing a couple of kilos off my body be quicker and easier?

I think the bike weighs about 12-13kg based on a set of bathroom scales and taking my weight off the two.

daveinduluth

I did a similar thing. I would just get some slicks for now and save for a real road bike, then you can have both. Also, I didn't change any gearing and it's working fine.

robinfisichella

Yeah thats pretty much what ive done Though i also bought some cheap aero bars for £38 now i should be as slippery as an eel in oil!

Has anyone tried inverting the handle bars (as i have wing shaped ones) to make a shallow 'n' shape and reduce the height of the bars? I heard people also inverted the headset or somehthing to lower them, is that easy to do?

4evrplan

You invert the stem so it angles down instead of up.

robinfisichella

Cool, yeah ive seen this done, ive put the minimum amount of spacers on as well. To be honest my mate just got a specized road bike and i completely blitzed him on his first time out so the difference cant be much right now.

TwinCam

lets do trix and flops with tha stem an grips
we got flips and chops for tha bar and widths


https://www.bmxtricksnow.com/Medium_Tricks.html

ptle

I'd put the smallest tires you can on the bike. If you can lockout the front suspension or adjust it so it's as rigid as possible. I wouldn't advise putting on drop bars because you'll have to buy bar tape, new cables and housing (possibly), and also shifters. You may be able to run mountain bike shifters, but you would still need to get brake levers. Putting on an aerobar may look silly, but it will give you a lot more hand positions.

If you're really serious about converting your bike you could swap out the cassette to a road cassette. The front gearing should be fine enough, but you could also swap out chainrings. Just make sure they are the four bolt pattern that are found on mountain bikes. Then you could throw a rigid fork on there.

I wouldn't spend to much though because you may be able to find a cheap road bike off craigslist or something similar.