Afternoon all.

Had my road bike stolen from work at the start of the month so currently commuting on my old hardtail frame with old/borrowed from my mtb/cheap parts (shout out to mrhoppy and robhughes off here).

Next couple of weeks I’m moving house and my commute will become 11 miles each way.

At the moment I’m on 26″ wheels with old Geax Easy Rider semi-knobbly/hybrid type tyres (2.1″ I think).

With the move money is tight and I can’t afford to replace the bike yet. Been thinking of getting a set of 700c or 29″ wheels for this frame and putting 28mm tyres (or something) on. Question is will this present a big improvement over simply putting a set of slick 1.5″ (or something) tyres on the 26″ wheels?

Currently the wheels do feel very draggy and hard work but I’m not sure how much of this is down to the change to smaller wheels and how much is to do with the tyres. I’d li9ke to make the increased miles a little easier on my legs, any advice/experience welcome.

Tyres will make the biggest difference, then the size of wheels after that (and only really because you can get get narrower tyres for roadie size rims).

Are you likely to run out of gears on the commute – i.e. are you just running a 32t front for example? I’d go for 26″ slicks if I was on a real budget or just accept you’re getting fitter by having more drag…

I’m running a triple and running out of gears hasn’t been an issue so far, not entirely sure of the lie of the land on the new route though.

I think slicks is thew ay to go short term but would appreciate any other views/advice.

I run 1.2″ slicks on my old MTB commuter. Works well for me. Cost peanuts and although not as quick as my roadie its plenty good enough for my commute and way better than running wider tyres.

will this present a big improvement over simply putting a set of slick 1.5″ (or something) tyres on the 26″ wheels

No.

Alright guys, sounds like slicks are where it’s at.

Thanks for the help, appreciate it.

I’ve ridden extensively on MTBs with 26in and 700c with slicks and concur that the tyres make more difference.

Another vote for slicks our at least proper road oriented tyres here. I sometimes commute on my old hard tail 17 miles. It’s fine. I have city jet 1.5s on it but I would go for something like a schwalbe marathon in hindsight as being a bit more suitable for non tarmac diversions.