I'm looking for a bike to replace my mountain bike from teenager-hood (It's just a cheap 15-year old department-store mountain bike.), to ride on paved roads and dirt paths in and around my small town. I went to Trek's bike-finder page, and it pointed me to it's line of "dual-sport" bikes. (
https://www.trekbikes.com/us/en_US/search/?text=dual+sport ) I have some question about them.
(1) Why 29 inch tires? How different are 29, 27.5 and 26 inch tires? ( My old bike has 26 inch tires.)
(2) Is 3x7 or 3x10 gears appropriate? I was reading that the Seattle police have mountain bikes with 1x11. (
https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2017/jun/15/the-new-horsemen-why-american-riot-police-embraced-the-bicycle ) How reliable is a 1x11 gearset? Is it really less maintenance?
(3) Why are there so few choices for colors? Each dual-sport bike 1-4 uses the same frame, so I would think it would be easy to get each in any color you want. How hard is it to paint a bike a new color?
(4) What other companies make a bike that fills the same niche?
(5) How much is the mark-up for buying a pre-assembled bike? Is there a site where I can buy the parts (of any company/brand) individually so I can put them together myself? (Like TigerDirect or NewEgg for computer parts.)
