ok so I'm using easton carbon 685mm bars just now, never had any wider, but the other day I was pedaling my girlfriends bike up the street as i had just cleaned it and her steering felt a lot quicker and lively

now she runs a set of kona DH bars that measure 720mm-ish so is it really worth the money to change just to give it a go? or is it a defo BIG bars are better??

Unlikely to be the bars in that case. Wider bars slow things down, you have to move your arms more to turn, not less.

Also bar size like anything else bike fit wise is related to your size. I'm 6'4" with long arms, I ride wide(er) bars on the DH bike and 685s on the XC bike.

Not if a lot of your riding is done in woodland ime

watch for trees.
Only happened once in a scottish riding holiday mind. My mate waited for me knowing fine well i'd have an issue.

Disclaimer… this photo is slightly staged.. obviously.

For going fast they are more stable. Improved my abaility to balance too.

Put the bike at an angle fool! 🙂

I'm 6ft 3 and only have one bike its my do it all spesh enduro, so maybe a happy medium find a cheap set of 700 or somthing in the classifieds?

Well maybe you'll like them, but they won't make your handling faster as you seem to think.

For a happy medium I'd be borrowing the bars off the GF's bike and going for a test ride…

I went from 700ish to 785ish (70mm stem) recently. It definitely makes a huge difference overall to steering, not entirely positive. Also (major ball-ache) it's involving re-hosing my brakes, which may be a consideration. Definitely borrow your girlfriend's bars for a day if she'll let you. 🙂

yeah just run her bars for a week see how you get on.

Wider bars should give a feeling of more stability, but they will make the steering slower, and make it more difficult to do x-ups and fit through trees

OH's bars are wider than mine. I know this cos I catch the f£$%ing things on the door frames every time I bring it in the house.

wider bars are not better than narrower bars, they're just different from narrower bars.

you may or may not like the difference, it may or may not make a difference to your riding experience.

mmmmm, excellent & insightful advice

I'm afraid I don't agree that wider bars slow the steering down. What I'd expect is that, the lever being longer, you need to move them less vigorously to get the front wheel to steer. The result, certainly on my short-stemmed set-up is that the steering is extremely light and responds immediately to any input.

That's not ideal when climbing, as it tends to mean that the front end spazzes all over the place when the front's less weighted. But it's rather nice when hooning down hill.

I've twatted my hand once, on a tree. Didn't like that much. 🙂

I like my new nuke proofs, but someone else didn't as they were selling them…………

Running with a much lower and shorter stem as well, seems to have countered the slower steering.

IMO the benifits are……….

Less hand fatigue, even though I'm much lower down, they don't seem to be as fatiguing(sp?) as easton risers.

More control (more leverage)

Better cable routing, my brakes were wearing through my stem/bars!

They dont feel any more unwieldy in the woods than 685mm risers, just requires an hour or so to reset your brain to a different width, the shimmying becomes natural and doesnt slow me down.

What I'd expect is that, the lever being longer, you need to move them less to get the front wheel to steer

Oy, get off the drugs, BD – reality seems to be distorted for you at the moment 😉

Next you'll be telling us that higher gearing makes pedalling easier…

great staged photo!

No idea. My set-up blows in the winds of fashion. Right now, I'm supposed to be running 785mm anodised low-risers with a short stem, so I am. 😀

The additional leverage makes it easier to turn the bars (shouldn't be necessary unless you have the stem cap wound too tight!), but you have to physically move your arms further to turn as the additional length creates a longer arc.

I used to ride old skool skinny bars, cut to about 590mm. In hindsight this was too much as it made the steering too lively even with a longish stem. When I upgraded to a new bike recently I left the bars stock length at 685mm or thereabouts but with a much shorter stem, jury is still out but the steering is definitely more positive and stable. Downside as already stated is that in tight woodland you can get caught, it's taken a long time to get used to the extra width through the trees.

+1 for borrowing your girlfriends bars.

To move the bars through 10° will take more movement, but less force.

So you can make finer adjustments more easily at speed, but it's more unwieldy at low speed.

I had mine at 785 to start with, but on very tight, slow switchbacks I was almost punching myself in the nuts 😕

a lot of the slack angle frames out there need wide bars to help them steer. Basically, frames have gone slacker, stems shorter and bars wider, over the recent past.

So it depends on your frame angles, as much as personal preference.

I recently went from 685 to 711 but ended up trimming them down to 700, which is perfect (for me) for the type of riding I do and the frame I have (456).

bargaintastic
http://www.on-one.co.uk/i/q/HBFSDHRISE/fsa-gravity-dh-riser-handlebar

It's cheap because, at 710mm, it is 75mm too short to be fashionable. It is also the wrong colour, and has too much rise. Wouldn't be seen dead etc. 🙂

i've got sunn 750mm bars on my 456 and they are ace – salsa 710s on my scandal and i may well go narrower there…

What is funny is that a slack head angle kicks the axle forward, which takes weight off the front tire, and increases the amount of force transferred from the trail through the steering to the handlebars. So stem length makes a big difference. Presently, the super slack all-mountain bikes also have the shortest stems, so they feel cramped when climbing, corner marginally on flat ground unless you weight the front wheel, and feel unstable through rock gardens unless the handlebars are wide.
What has evolved to fix it are super-wide handlebars.
Super wide bars:
-force the rider to move forward over the front wheel
-add leverage to compensate for the boost in trail feedback
-effectively lengthens the cockpit by straightening out the arms

What all-mountain and XC trailbikes need is, a combination of a slightly longer stem and medium-width bars. Adding a half inch in the stem has about the same effect as adding an inch on either side of the bars. Slightly narrower bars give the rider more freedom of movement fore and aft and laterally, when balancing in the saddle. This, however, is contrary to present fashion, so we'll have to wait a while for bike designers to figure the head-angle/stem relationship on their own.

YMMV

Love the picture!

It depends on what you're looking for at the end of the day. Buys some, I bet you could flog them on here or ebay and only loose a bit if you don't get on with them.

As long as you don't want to ride anywhere with narrow gaps you'll be fine, or end up turning them into OnOne mary bars by accident.

Noone's mentioned here the natural position of your hands on the bars. My hands sat naturally on the ends of my grips with 685 bars, despite all the controls being well inboard.

I bought sunline v1 745's and I now find that my hands sit naturally bang on the centre of the grips which is obviously where they are supposed to be. Riding narrower bars now feels more twitchy at speed.