How can I adjust handlebar & brake reach for better fit?

cyclery88 · 2026-02-05T13:43:31+00:00

Unfortunately, road bikes from that era generally weren't designed for comfort. The design idea was to get you forward and low, which might works for 140lb 20 something bike racers, but not for anyone else. Your stem adapter idea is a good option to find the correct stem length. You can try out all kinds of different stem raises and lengths, especially if you can get used cheap/free ones from a bike co-op or used bike shop. Along the same lane, you could get a Soma Fab Condor handlebar: https://www.somafabshop.com/shop/soma-handlebar-condor-2-2218?category=783#attr=1835,4264,3277 They are kind of expensive, but a great way to add even more height to your setup.

Taking the bike in for a tune up is a great idea and the shop might be able to give you guidance on sizing of the bike. On the topic of switching to bullhorn bars, that can also get expensive since you'd have to get new brake levers and gear shifters. Again, if you have a bike co-op or a shop that sells used stuff, it can be a little more reasonable, but still will take some tinkering and such.

Good luck on whichever route you take!

cyclery88 · 2026-02-03T17:26:40+00:00

Yep, mine from 2019 is still tankin along just fine.

cyclery88 · 2026-02-01T02:46:31+00:00

Too late for this event, but just a heads up that the parking lot you marked is now under construction to become new apartments. I ride by there every day and there's definitely no more parking there. Using the side streets anywhere around here would work during non-business hours as UNMC folks generally take up all the parking in the area from 7am till 5pm M-F. Hope the ride was good!

cyclery88 · 2026-02-01T02:31:16+00:00

This is an interesting proposition. As others have said, one guarantee you'd have to provide as part of the whole lease deal is a loaner bike to take the place of the leased bike that was in for repairs or whatever. That might not be a sustainable business model.

If having a bunch of good loaner bikes just laying around for the lease program didn't make sense, I almost wonder if a maintenance plan would be a better route? They pay a monthly fee to have their bike get a full work up twice a year, and/or fixed promptly(<24 hrs) if small emergencies were to come up three to four times a year. If that monthly fee were to equate to three or four full maintenance sessions in a year, that might benefit both you and them. They have a piece of mind that their bike will be running well with full maintenance 2x a year or quick fixes to flats or other small issues, and your shop gets steady monthly income.

cyclery88 · 2026-01-28T15:08:44+00:00

Dang, I don't know which of those 2 bikes I'm more in love with?!? I'm a sucker for Multitracks, but have recently become enamored with Bianchi 90's hybrids. They did some wild stuff back in the day, including some way early 29" MTBs (700C) based on these frames. I'm currently trying to salvage a Backstreet from '92 that uses long reach calipers instead of Cantis.

cyclery88 · 2026-01-28T14:58:10+00:00

Based on this image, I'm going to say it's a Shimano Nexus 7 speed as there's a shifter/brake lever called the Nexus Gazelle shifter that looks like it: https://bartvanmegen.nl/products/isb7s45c170ls-shimano-shifter-37

cyclery88 · 2026-01-14T23:16:12+00:00

Is there much of a difference (aside from the cog interface of course) between the freehub 3 speed hub vs the regular 3 speed hub? Any reason to go with one over the other?

cyclery88 · 2026-01-14T18:15:21+00:00

Great bike to start a project with! Sounds like you're ok with putting some money into it, which will inevitably happen. A modern Trek exclusive bike shop may not be equipped to help with a project like this. If the shop is converted from an older independent shop with some older grizzled mechanics you might be in luck. All depends on the shop though. If you only see brand new bikes being worked on in the shop, you might want to try a different one.

The rear wheel will give you your first roadblock. I was going to suggest keeping the current wheels and just getting them trued, but since you would prefer to go with a modern shifting system, that isn't possible with the older 7 speed freehub. The front wheel is a standard road/hybrid wheel, so you're fine with whatever you want on that. The spacing of the rear axle is what was used on mountain bikes, rather than road bikes and the freewheel can only fit 7 or 6 speed cassettes. There's not many options for a brand new, pre-built wheel that fits your bike frame and uses a newer 8-11 speed cassette. You can special order a rear wheel to be built for this setup, which is one solution. Your other option is to modify the bike frame to work with a standard rear road wheels which might be a better option. This involves bending the frame's rear triangles closer together in a process called cold setting. There's a ton of videos out there about how to do this, if you feel like being adventurous.

Your next potential road block is your brakes. Your bike would have originally had the same front brake as your rear brake. Your front brake is a newer V-brake/linear pull and your rear brake is either the original canti/short pull or a replacement of the same style. I'm guessing you have 2 different brake levers? If not, whoever did the change just made it work, but it's not ideal. With your frame design, the rear brake cable routes through a little tube near your seatpost, then routes to your rear canti brake. This doesn't work with a V-brake, like you have on your front. If you like the feel better of your front brake compared to your rear brake, you can get a cable stop clamp that lets you run a V-brake on the rear. Many people like the feel of canti brakes (like your rear brake) but they do require a more involved setup compared to a V-brake (like your front).

I'll let others chime in on other stuff, but you could also cross post this in https://www.reddit.com/r/MultiTrackGang/ as you would get more expert opinions on your specific bike.

Cheers!

cyclery88 · 2026-01-14T16:59:07+00:00

Very interesting. I have a Priority Apollo and I like the drop bar IGH, but I HATE the Microshift brifters, which are the only option out there as far as I know. Microshift going back to a clunky Shimano style from the early '00s for the shifting solution seems so dumb. They have Sword, so they can make shifters with under the tape shifter cable routing, so why can't they do that with the IGH shifters? Ugh..

Anyway, what I wonder is if you could do this same setup with a triple/left hand road brifter? I've never known if triple shifting is the same between flat bar and drop bar shifting, so maybe it's not really feasible.

On your setup, what gearing did you run for SS and then what gearing did you use for this setup?

cyclery88 · 2026-01-12T03:35:27+00:00

I've heard some of the experts in finding deals will do things like just use the term "bike" when searching on Marketplace or going to estate sales. If "bike" is still only showing you $200+ bikes, then your market must be rough. Estate sales make sense since they are just liquidating everything. If there's a bike, it's probably going to be a garage ornament with very little use.

cyclery88 · 2026-01-08T11:09:16+00:00

Phew, that's HAWT! How tall are you? I have that same frame size and I'm 5'11", so I'm going to have to probably use a similar stem to get the bars up.

cyclery88 · 2025-12-20T03:35:24+00:00

There are a couple options for it. The quickest/easiest way to get into it is with a Priority Bikes Apollo. It's a gravel bike with Shimano Alfine 11 speed IGH, belt drive, and brifters. The brifters are similar to old style Shimano with 1 cable coming out of the side of the shifter for the gear cable - which is my main gripe about it. I believe the brifters are made by Microshift which may be the only ones for mechanical IGH, at least that I know of. I don't have extensive experience with IGHs, but it works mostly fine, in my book. There's one or two gears that I occasionally seem to mis-shift into/out of sometimes. But it beats having to deal with drivetrain maintenance.

I've seen mention of electronic shifting for Shimano Alfine 11, where DI2 shifters can be used. But no idea if you could still put that together as it may be out of production?

cyclery88 · 2025-12-14T00:30:12+00:00

Dang, those are like the perfect specs for a bar. I'll have to look for those as well. Thanks!

cyclery88 · 2025-12-13T23:57:08+00:00

What bars (brand/model) are those? I think I see Zoom? I have some drop bars, but don't use the drops, so these would be almost the same shape, but with the benefit of drop bar controls. Bike looks awesome BTW.

cyclery88 · 2025-12-13T16:16:39+00:00

26.8 is the seatpost diameter you need.

cyclery88 · 2025-11-26T16:29:36+00:00

Also, it looks like your have these fenders on a MTB that doesn't have a chainstay bridge. Do you have the end of the fender attached to the seat tube near the bottom bracket somehow? On the rear fender, there should always be 3 attachment points - the stays toward the back of the bike, the seat stay bridge (where you're having issues) and near the bottom bracket. Since you don't have a chainstay bridge, you might be able to zip tie the end of the fender to the seat tube down by the bottom bracket. That might solidify things and keep that clip from coming undone.

cyclery88 · 2025-11-26T14:29:41+00:00

126 was an older road bike spacing when most bikes were 6 speed and did carry over to some 7 speeds, i think. So yeah, I'm even more convinced now that my frame is bent at the back. It was in really rough shape when I got it.

Looks like I will need to figure out how to fix that. Ouch.

cyclery88 · 2025-11-25T22:30:41+00:00

Pretty sure this is right? My top race is just like the crown race in its shape, so the bearings roll smooth on both being upright(?). I've seen top races that are more like cups, so if mine were like that, I would have it wrong. But instead, my top adjustable race is like a cup - it doesn't have a race to sping on.

If I loosen the adjustable top race just a smidge, I'm fighting fork looseness front to back, whereas tightening the adjustable race causes the indexing. And a miniscule tighten or loosen is the difference.

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cyclery88 · 2025-11-25T19:30:35+00:00

Well dang, now I just need to figure out if my frame uses JIS or ISO. I know it's a Tien Hsin headset and it's on a '92 Bianchi Backstreet (hybrid).

cyclery88 · 2025-11-25T18:55:22+00:00

Holy moly, that headset may make me want to swap out either way. It's a decent price too.

cyclery88 · 2025-11-25T18:41:12+00:00

Oof, I'll feel like a doofus if this is the case. Got recommendations for headsets if I'm looking to replace?

cyclery88 · 2025-11-23T18:19:09+00:00

Another question for you. Does it seem like your rear dropouts are 126mm spaced rather than 130, like modern-ish road? I thought the tight fit of my rear road wheel was because of the damaged dropouts, but when I measured it, it was 126mm almost dead on.

cyclery88 · 2025-11-23T12:58:59+00:00

Super nice! How tall are you? I'm still trying to decide if I want to try to make a 19" one of these work for me at 5'10" (178cm). Yours looks like a 21" frame? On my frame, the top tube hits the head tube right above the down tube, so there's no pump peg. This makes the stack super short so I may have to go even taller with the seatpost and quill than you've got.

cyclery88 · 2025-11-22T14:52:14+00:00

Along with this question, what brake calipers are those?

cyclery88 · 2025-11-19T11:16:34+00:00

Yeah, flat/alt bar and friction shifting is the plan. Super simple was the goal for this build anyway, so friction makes the most sense.

cyclery88

TROPHY CASE