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Latest Thoughts on Bar Width?


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12 minutes ago, JRA said:

Just posted that pic for reference, not to take a poke at TJ. He's a fucking badass with any width handlebar, still.

Haha my first real MTB, a 2011 Orbea Alma, came with bars like that! Didn't know any better at the time, and they seemed fine for the XC stuff I was doing. Have long since abandoned those bars, and the 2-finger braking. 

 

ChainSmoker (2017_07_18 13_09_01 UTC).JPG

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GMBN has had a lot of 'retro' stuff this past week. Pretty cool stuff to remember (if you're old enough to have experienced it.) MBA magazine last month had a 20 year lookback, featured the bike I bought in 1999, Trek VRX 300 (still have it, too.) Bars are pretty damn narrow.

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After noticing some shoulder pain on rides lately this thread has been an interesting read. Lee McCormack's calculator gave me 815mm as max width and 775mm with the suggested 5% reduction at the low end.

I've been riding On-One Mary bars for many, many years and really like the hand/wrist interface. This helped solve problems with numb hands and arms, but the width of the Mary is 645mm. This might help explain the shoulder pain. Granted, I'm a lover of riding through skinny trees fast, and have built many a trail with "Rob-Knockers" and I know that going to a wider bar WILL result in a learning curve that might skin some knuckles. However, I'm now handlebar-curious, and am looking for some with the width as calculated that can also provide a more natural arm-wrist-grip path like the Mary bars and Ergon grips provide. This has intrigued me to see what was out there.

After some research I've decided to give SQLab products a whirl. Their 30X model in the 12 degree sweep is 780 mm wide.

As well, their 710 Grip looks like it will be a good replacement for the Ergons.

This article and a few other independent reviews swayed me to give this brand a try.

Trigger pulled.

Edited by Ridenfool
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6 hours ago, throet said:

Haha my first real MTB, a 2011 Orbea Alma, came with bars like that! Didn't know any better at the time, and they seemed fine for the XC stuff I was doing. Have long since abandoned those bars, and the 2-finger braking. 

Ha- Last time I raced at Squilchuck was 2004 or 5. I hear they completely re-did the trail system there. Did you live in Wenatchee? Or maybe Spokane? Most of the guys I knew riding Orbea MTBs back then were from Spokane...

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I'm 6'2" and both my Transition and my Santa Cruz have 740mm CroMag bars with 80mm and 60mm stems respectively. I'm seriously thinking of cutting them down to 720. On an average ride my climbing time will be 3x longer than descending. While wide bars are great for descending they don't seem so great for any serious climbing. It's hard to pull straight in while in the wide push up position, you end up doing a lot of sawing back and forth.  I find myself hanging on to the brake reservoirs just to have my arms in the right position. I've also noticed that as bars have gotten wider I hear more people complaining of pain in their wrist and/or basal joint. All that being said there are a lot of anatomical differences in people. My son is 6'4" and loves his 800mm Renthal Fatbars

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7 hours ago, axis said:

Ha- Last time I raced at Squilchuck was 2004 or 5. I hear they completely re-did the trail system there. Did you live in Wenatchee? Or maybe Spokane? Most of the guys I knew riding Orbea MTBs back then were from Spokane...

I was in Richland, WA at the time. One of the local shops in the Tri-cities carried Giant, Orbea, and Felt. I also raced in the Bavarian Bike & Brew in Leavenworth that was part of that same Vicious Cycle series.     

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Was it released on April 1 as well?

I want to try that with The Rise bars and an adjustable seatpost, front and rear derailers, and a remote fork and shock controls, just to see how many controls I can fit on the bars. Did I leave anything out?

Oh yeah, the Invisi-bell. That's everything.

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6 hours ago, TheX said:

Ummm, I guess that would be good for some people. I have no use for them that I can think of.

What if they had forward-looking sensors that could detect tree gates? Stay wide until it senses trees, then slams inward so you can keep riding through? Yeah, technology, baby! 0.o

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On 6/28/2019 at 5:41 PM, throet said:

Haha my first real MTB, a 2011 Orbea Alma, came with bars like that! Didn't know any better at the time, and they seemed fine for the XC stuff I was doing. Have long since abandoned those bars, and the 2-finger braking. 

 

ChainSmoker (2017_07_18 13_09_01 UTC).JPG

dayum bruh, was it legal to open carry those guns like that back then??? 💪

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On 6/29/2019 at 5:12 PM, Ridenfool said:

Was it released on April 1 as well?

I want to try that with The Rise bars and an adjustable seatpost, front and rear derailers, and a remote fork and shock controls, just to see how many controls I can fit on the bars. Did I leave anything out?

Oh yeah, the Invisi-bell. That's everything.

Squeeky horn. Cateye. Cell phone. Cup holder. streamers. Rear view mirrors.

Edited by Bamwa
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  • 1 year later...

It's almost 2 years now.  Anyone that changed bars or width have updates?   I have always felt my bars are a little bit wide but mostly I'm able to ride them for a long time without issues.  However, demoing bikes I realized that I'm very sensitive to back sweep + width.  A lot of posts here mentioned sweep but did not specify up or back sweep.  With a pretty straight bar, the top of my thumbs starts really hurting even after half an hour.  I was a bit shocked at how dramatic this was.  Riding these bars really illustrated to me why someone may have come up with the concept of the Togs since moving the thumb above the bar was exactly what provided some relief.  

Is there any kind of methodology to figuring out optimal sweep?

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for the sake of proportionality, I've been using a 750-ish bar for two or three years now. I really like the 12° backsweep of mine, although a 70mm stem is needed to undo the reach-negating affect of the bend on this particular bar. that Lee McCormack method makes a great starting point.

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1 hour ago, AntonioGG said:

Anyone that changed bars or width have updates?   I have always felt my bars are a little bit wide but mostly I'm able to ride them for a long time without issues.

Funny you should ask. Had my first ride today on my new build with 760mm bars vs the 740mm I had been riding. I also shortened the stem from 60mm to 50mm. Overall it felt really great, although I didn't take on any real technical features or punchy climbs this morning. Both my old bars and the new ones are only a 7 degree sweep, which has always been enough for me. I'll need a few weeks of riding to say for sure, but initial impression is that I like the change.   

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