Propping Up the Bars - Get a Grip! The Handlebars...
Imagine, for a brief second, a bike without handlebars. Easy enough. Now try riding it. it is possible, as most of us ride without a hand on the bars at some time. The difficulty comes in control at slow speeds. Or for that matter, control at any speed. We can ride a single-speed with a coaster brake, letting us stop, but control is marginal at the best of times.
Arch-Duke Franz Ferdinand. His handlebar could not save him in Sarajevo. |
Cornering can be an issue. Bicycles and motorbikes steer by a phenomenon known as counter-steering. Simply, you push the bars to turn the front wheel towards the direction that you do NOT want to turn towards. in practice, this feels like leaning down on the side you are turning into, but in reality you are pushing the front wheel the other way. What happens next is quite interesting.
Turns left, but which way is his front pointing? Right. |
And you cannot turn like that if you do not have handlebars.
So, what bars to choose? How long is a piece of string? Urban commuters, mountain bikes, BMX bikes all have upright bars of different style. Road bikes typically have the classic drop handlebars, which have been around in form or another since the period 1895-1907, when they first started to appear, with varying degrees of drop or curvature, throughout Europe and North America. There are several forms of the drop, or anatomic, handlebars available, ranging from the classic curves of track bikes to the straighter, angled bars that are common today; I ride a pair of these, and personally find them to be more comfortable than the older, curved bars that I used to use.
You will find this bit information anywhere you choose to look; use handlebars that have an outside-edge width that matches your shoulder width. If you ride narrower bars than your shoulders, you will always be riding cramped inwards, with ensuing discomfort. The same goes for bars that are wider than your shoulders. You really will not like riding mismatched bars for too long. I am reasonably broad, and use 44 cm bars.
The next temptation is material. Although the world seems to be moving to carbon, I am sticking with alloy. If you crash, and I have, alloy bars will, at worst, bend. If you come down on carbon bars they will not bend. They will flex under the impact, but you can end up with deep cracks or wrinkles, both of which create zones of weakness. And these fail.
Honestly truly, you really do not want you bars to fail. For carbon, this is called a snap that sounds like a rifle-shot, inevitably combined with you crashing forwards onto the headset, broken shards of carbon, and a well-timed face-plant on the road.
I'm taking the alloy option.
So, the angled style of drops, 44 cm, alloy, of standard 31.7 mm bar bore. Although I found some sharp deals on the regular websites, the sale went to an ebay trader (Meetbike), for a Deda Big Piega Road Handlebar, with these specs:
- Width: 44cm outside to outside
- 31.7mm bar bore
- 142mm drop
- 86mm reach
- Deda Anatomic bend
- Material: 6061 T6 Heat Treated Alloy
The total cost to me was NZ$35.65. Although the cost was a tad more than the Easton EA30 bars from some established stores, the Deda, at 305 gm, is 10 gm lighter than the Easton. I could have bought bars that were even lighter, but the price differential was typically by a factor of about 10. The Deda is light enough!
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