A £100 road bike make-over can morph your road bike into a slightly more specialist machine and lead you on a whole new route. Road bikes offer huge flexibility, they are like the blank canvas just waiting for you to crack open the paint…
TT Try Out
Get into time trialling with a few road bike tweaks
Tri Bars are the single biggest speed gain you can add to a standard road bike to race against the clock. Velotoze rubber over shoe covers are a simple, lightweight way to make your shoes more aero. Michelin Pro 4 tyres offer great performance and light-weight, a great way add a racier feel to your bike. These cost-effective tweaks will give your road bike a little extra speed for a race against the clock, such as a summer evening 10 mile TT for example.
Tri bars Deda Parabolica Tri Bars £54.95
Velotoze Aero Overshoes £16.99
Michelin Pro 4 Tyres Tubes Pair £43.99
Total £115.93
Grand Tourer
Voyage away from your usual rides & take the road less travelled
Touring is a great way to get away from your usual rides and explore somewhere new.
Wider, heavy-duty tyres, up to 28mm, can add comfort, providing your frame will fit the tyre width, as well as ‘bullet proof’ reliability, enabling rougher road surfaces to be tackled with confidence. The Topeak Toploader has the large capacity for a top mount bag, ideal for keeping those essentials close at hand. Any unwelcome chafing on those long touring rides can be eased with Chamois Butt’r Eurostyle cream. Long tours can require more back-up-emergency provision on the bike, Merlin Tool Bottle is designed to fit those essential tools to keep you moving.
Continental Gatorskin 28mm £23.99 x 2
Topeak Toploader – Bag £22.00
Chamois Butt’r Eurostyle 8oz £12.95
Merlin Tool Bottle £2.00
Total £84.93
Road Racer
Tweak your road bike with a few choice components to add that zing to your machine.
£100 can re-sharpen the handling and speed up your road bike. Continental GP4000 tyres add grip and speed, they are the ‘go to’ tyre of choice of many road racers. New bar tape can transform your bikes looks for minimal cost. BBB Ceramic Jockey wheels offer a low friction (slight mechanical drag saving) and low noise alternative to standard original jockey wheels. Brake blocks are often overlooked, SwissStop FlashPro BXP pads offer a huge improvement in braking over most manufacturer’s standard blocks.
Continental gp4000 x2 £63.95
Deda Handle Bar tape £5.50
BBB BDP-12 RollerBoys Ceramic Jockey Wheels £17.95
SwissStop FlashPro BXP Brake Pads £19.99
Total £107.39
All Roader
Set your road bike up to cover slightly rougher terrain by fitting more heavy-duty tyres and an extra layer of bar tape. Tyre clearance is the limiting factor with all-roading your road bike. Check your bike can handle wider tyres before heading down this route. Doubling up the bar tape will give comfort to hands and wrists when travelling over rougher surfaces. Make sure your water bottle cages hold the bottles tightly too, aluminium ones, like the BBB ones below, can be adjusted (pushed in) to hold the bottle tighter over rougher roads.
Schwalbe Marathon Plus Tyres 25mm £27.95 x 2
Deda Handlbar Tape £5.95
BBB Fuel Tank Bottle Cage £5.35 x 2
Total £72.55
Road Bike Make Over
The beauty of a road bike is that once you have had your Touring ride, Race or TT fun, your road bike is still there and ready to return to its regular service. If your wonder into other cycling worlds has left you wanting more, a specialist Touring bike, TT or Race bike could be the way to go. Either would offer substantial improvements over an adapted road bike and would take you further into each genre of bike riding. It’s always best to keep your good old road bike though ? – you never know where it might take you next…
