MTB or CrossBike?



andyanansu

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Sep 10, 2004
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Hi

I'm planning to get a bike for riding some cyclo cross this winter

I want to know what is the advantage/disadvantage of having a cyclo cross bike comepare to a MTB?

Thanks for any suggestions

Andy
 
It really depends on what your focus is and what types of trails you plan to ride outside of competition.

Unless you are really serious about cyclocross, a mountain bike is probably the better choice as it is more versatile offroad. If you want to do some touring on the road, a cyclocross bike is a decent touring bike.

On a cross-bike, you pretty much give up singletrack or even moderately rough terrain. The gearing is usually more road than mountain bike style climbing gears. If your trails are relatively flat, then you might be just fine with this.

I hope this helps.
 
andyanansu said:
I see, so who ever invented the cross bike must be pretty stupid
I owned a cross-bike for about 4 years (actually two of them) but I was racing cross. It really is a competition specific bike that one would rarely see as someone's primary offroad machine. A lot of guys have bikes that are only used for time-trials or crits or triathlons etc...

If you wanted to own one bike that you could swap tires and ride fire-roads and then the next day go on a 50 mile road ride with your roadie friends, it would work for that.
 
I have done some cross races last year,
prob over 90% of the riders are using cross bikes

I'm a triathlete, but I also do XC bike & run in the winter as well
I have a friends that own all kind of bikes inc MTB and CrossBike

There must be some advantage for CrossBike over the MTB,
otherwise why don't he just use his MTB to race?

I also have another question, is Canti-Brake better than V-Brake?
why all CrossBike use Canti?

Thanks for replies
 
For cyclocross...no doubt a crossbike is much better than an MTB. You are running the hills when you are racing so the lighter-and-easier-to-shouldermount-crossbike will reign. For general offroad use, the crossbike isn't ideal again because you are usually not running up your favorite mountainbike hill (although I have been known to do that :)).

A crossbike has such skinny wheels that you don't need all that stopping power that v-brakes would provide. Other than that, I am not sure why canti's are so much more popular..legacy perhaps? I recently saw a cannondale crossbike with disks....mainly for mud performance I would guess.
 
Cross bikes use cantis because, for the most part, cross bikes use road break leavers. Road leavers are not designed to be used with direct pull V-breaks. They can be used with the addition of an adapter but without that they don't have the leverage required to give firm stopping power.
 

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