Converting touring bike to road?

[lizbids]

What are your thoughts on swapping out a few components on a touring bike (Bianchi Volpe) to make it more like a road bike? I'm not looking to race competitively, just increase my speed while I loop around the park for personal fitness. I know it's not the same geometry as a road bike, but I figured new wheels and tires would make me roll faster. Any suggestions/potential problems?

[DebW]

What do you have on the bike now in terms of wheels (hubs, #spokes, rims), tires, cassette, and chainrings? If you are running wide touring tires (28, 32, 35 mm?) now, you'd benefit from narrower (23, 28 mm) higher-pressure tires. You may want to replace a wide-range cassette (12-34?) with a much narrower one to gain tighter gear spacing. Do you stil want to tour sometimes, or do you want to give up touring capability for fast riding?

My new custom Peter Mooney bike is set up for both touring and fast road rides. I have 2 sets of wheels for it, one with 650x23 tires and a 12-23 cassette, the other with 26"x1.3" tires and a 12-32 cassette. I swap them about once a week. The most noticable difference is having widely-spaced gears vs closely-spaced gears. And the difference in tire width changes the feel of the ride and lets me carry a load with confidence. If you have 700c wheels, you can get both narrow and wide tires to fit the same rims, but may prefer 2 sets of wheels as a matter of convenience.

[lizbids]

http://www.bianchiusa.com/06_volpe.html here are the specs to the bike. I'm going to go online to see how much these components may end up costing. Any more advice would be appreciated, thanks!

[BleeckerSt_Girl]

Liz,
setting your handlebars lower down will improve your aerodynamics and help your speed. Or start riding with your hands down in the drops if you haven't been yet. If you have straight bars, get drop bars so you can get your body front down.

See if scooting your saddle back a bit is possible- when you can "get behind" your pedal stroke more you may find you have more leg power- it happened to me when I shoved my saddle back.
Also...sometimes it is easier and/or cheaper to lose 2 pounds of body weight than to lose 2 pounds of bike components.
I see you live in the city- are there any big long inclines or steep hills you can get to to train on?- building up your leg muscles will make a very noticeable difference in how fast you can go.

Another tip is to load your bike with MORE weight in order to build up your strength. Then on days you want to go really fast, take the bricks out of your lunchbag!

[lizbids]

Hi Lisa,

I actually just finished a loaded tour that took about 6 weeks,so I have lots of muscle...which I'm sure is slowly depleting since I've been off the bike for so long!

Yes, one park by me has a little hill that can take your breath away if you are out of shape!

[DebW]

http://www.bianchiusa.com/06_volpe.html here are the specs to the bike. I'm going to go online to see how much these components may end up costing. Any more advice would be appreciated, thanks!

OK, it would be easy to replace the 700x38 tires with 700x23 or 700x28 (it's possible that 23s are too narrow for your rims, see
Sheldon Brown's article on tire vs rim size. Definitely swap the cassette for a much narrower range. Sugino chainrings are easy to get in different sizes, so if you keep spinning out with the 48 you could swap that up to a 52 or 54 (check this line). Your front derailleur would need an adjustment if you swap chainrings. Other upgrades are possible, but I think these will give you the most bang for the buck. Saving weight can make riding more fun, but lighter stuff is $$$.