Help me... swapping flats for drops, which shifters?

Hi,

Im running an old mtb as a commuter at the moment and genuinely hate the ride. I hate flat bars so very much. But the bike itself is sound and I can stick a rack on the thing so...

I am wanting to stick drops on it to make it useful so I can manage the bars bit.
However im stuck at the shifters/brakes. Ideally I want to put drop brake/shifter combination units on but have no idea which are compatible or even where to start looking. It currently has sram x-7 trigger style shifters and tektro barke levers. The front derailleur is Sram xgen and the rear is Sram sx5.
Its a 3 x 9 gear setup on a Carrera Kraken.

Can anyone tell me what drop bar shifters would be compatible?

This bloke has had some success with Campag Ergopower levers driving SRAM dérailleurs, not precisely your situation but it's one possible route - find the right J-Tek shiftmate to mate whatever levers you find to your existing RD. The slightly more obvious route would be Shimano Sora 9-speed STIs and a matching Shimano road dérailleur, matching in this case being any 9 or 10 speed Shimano RD you happen to have laying around, presumably a long cage one. You can get new ST-3500 levers and an RD-3500-GS new for about £110. You may not like the way road levers work with your brakes, assuming they are normal MTB V-brakes, there's a travel agent for that but Sora short V-brakes BR-R353 are probably cheaper than the travel agent and expressly designed to work with the levers.

Braking should be ok. It's got discs fitted. Cable operated so in theory should just swap to new levers. It's the indexing I'm worried about.

Braking should be ok. It's got discs fitted. Cable operated so in theory should just swap to new levers.

Nope.

Oh balls. So much for my simple plan. Might be easier to just buy some thing else and handbag the mtb off to my son.

sell the bike and get something other.

Or just buy drop bar V-brake levers and put in some bar end shifters (the left on those is not-indexed, so, will handle ANY front dérailleur)

http://www.wiggle.co.uk/tektro-rl520-drop-bar-brake-lever/

and

http://www.wiggle.co.uk/shimano-dura-ace-7700-9-speed-bar-end-lever-set/

the levers will cope with the V-brakes and the shifters will handle a 3*9 setup...