How do you set yours up ??

bars higher or lower than saddle??

cheers

steve

Tips of bars roughly the same as the nose of the saddle..ish..

Bars, where ever they feel right. The same for the saddle. Stop worrying about it and just experiment, everybody’s different.

What kind of bike?

independently of each other, unless we’re talking about my roadbike.

Bars and levers set to the optimum height, width, angle for riding while stood up.
saddle height is adjusted for the terrain/gradient but run at a dirtjump angle as that’s what I want all mtbs to handle like, it also allows me to perch on the nose higher wile climbing and get off the back easier on the odd occasion it’s still up on anything interesting/fun.

Bars where comfortable.

Saddle height i sit on the bike put heel on pedal and extend my leg/pedal to its lowest position and adjust the seat height so i have a slight bend in the knee.

Saddle forward/back is adjusted on the first ride or two to get the reach right.

Dont overthink it though just do it until you are comfortable then leave it alone.

depends on the bike’s purpose but more so on you – seems to me that tall riders with long arms will have bars well down on road or xc bikes whereas shorter folk may not

Set your bike to “middling” settings for saddle and bars (ie not masses of headset spacers etc), try it and then piss about a bit to see what feels best

Saddle height so i have a slight kink in the leg at the bottom of the pedal stroke….same across all bikes.

Bars vary depending on use….when i had an XC orientated bike i had the bars low and matched to a long stem so i had plenty of room and could stretch out….on the current AM bike the bars are still low-ish (a single 5mm spacer between headset and stem) but the stem is shorter so i can get more weight back when it gets steep.

Assuming the frame “fits” I set the saddle height so knee is just bent with a barefoot (or socked foot!) resting the heel on the pedal in the 6 o’clock position.
Then with saddle in the middle of it’s back/forward travel I use a stem length that lets my fingertips just reach the bars with elbow on nose of saddle.
Bar height and saddle back/forward then tweaked after a few rides for comfort.
For me, riding XC/trail and road, this usually ends up with saddle about4-5 cm above the height of the bars & saddle slightly back of mid position.
Of course, to be stw-worthy you’ll need a slammed stem and half a yard of seatpost showing 😉

(a single 5mm spacer between headset and stem)

This helpful gem means absolutely nothing on it’s own.
ie. we have no idea of fork length, headtube length, headset stack, bar/stem rise or BB height. or more importantly rider size..

Renton – you’re the guy who put up loads of posts of your new Bfe with a rather pointless XC build aren’t you? think you need to decide what kind of riding you actually want to do before you ask advice on setting it up..

To be fair, the OPs original question was utterly pointless too. I’d wager anyone who’s replled to this thread has only done so through boredom.

Why should you care where mine are – put yours’ where they work best, for you.

Set my saddle first then put the bars at a position where they are comfortable.

For me this is lower than the saddle on all my bikes.

I’ve always like my saddle slightly higher than my bars.

DJ

😀

This isn’t aimed at all the helpful folk but; My God!

Are there fist fights when STW does it’s races/meets? There’s always someone wants to argue… 🙄

Lovin the fatbastard bike.. 😀 it’s so blue dooby doodoodoo!

Gents, we have a winner! The award for the most pointless thread of the day!

Dropper post, innit……

DrP

saddle… at a dirtjump angle… it also allows me to perch on the nose higher[b] sit on my balls or massage my ring [/b] wile climbing

s’pose we can’t all have a nice tight scrotum. 😉

[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tLxg0dbvokQ[/video]

Did you manage to kick the smack Renton? Or still trainspotting?

Love that film

s’pose we can’t all have a nice tight scrotum

Or worms

“I’ve always like my saddle slightly higher than my bars.”

I guess that I should have said…

“I’ve always liked my bars slightly lower than my seat.”

Because your seat height is not something you can’t really change (if it’s at the correct height).. 8)

Hey Steve.. I guess to get better answers you need to have said what type of bike you have and what type of riding you do.. 😉

DJ

Thanks DJ.

It wasnt aimed at me to be honest I was hoping people would tell me how they set their bikes up just to be nosey really.

Im going to set my bike up how it is comfortable for me to ride it, if that means I have more spacers under my stem than is fashionable for the stw click then so be it !!

With an allen key, usually about 50 times before its right,

Then just one for luck.

Bars always lower than bars by a few inchs on my mtb’s and road bikes

I have abnormally long legs and do feel as if no bike (without longer crank arms) can fit both my top and bottom half so I always opt for a better top tube fit as I can manipulate the saddle height. When xc my saddle is above my bars by more than I’d care to admit. When more aggressive it comes way down

My legs = Claudia Schiffer but better and yes I’m a bloke

Renton – the answer to my original question to you is “no” then 😉

I have thought about this a fair bit lately since embarking on setting up My DH bike a few months back, but it’s turned into a bit of a long winded, all encompassing excercise.

What I’ve ended up doing is attempting to set each of my bikes up as best possible for the type of riding it’s used for and started taking lots of measurements:

Fore/aft dimensions along the bike taken from the rear axle and height taken relative to the ground along with a reference head angle and tilt angle (from horizontal) on saddles, brake lever angles, etc, etc, etc, there’s pretty much limitless things you can try to dimension on any bike when trying to understand how the setup works.

The interesting thing (to Me at least) was that once I stopped setting up mostly by eye and start trying to work out relative points in space for each contact position how similar these were across some of my bikes, and how a few tweaks of one bike to match certain elements of setup of another can improve things a bit for handling or pedaling.

The other thing is of course is that Static geometry is what most of us would tend to measure, but of course that isn’t really what you ride, on a HT your angles steepen up and wheelbase reduces slightly with sag, on an FS bike dependant on front/rear sag and travel your BB will drop your wheel base might shorten, your HA/SA might slacken or steepen Static dimensions are an indication but you need to take account of the dynamics of the bike in use too, very little is actually that consistant really.

It’s not an excercise I’ve quite finished with yet but it has highlighted to me that the setup of any bike for any type of riding is a bit more complex than how far above/below or level with the bars you set your saddle, each bike should be taken as a fresh set of points in space which you need to adapt and configure to suit your own body and needs.
Fashions, “rules” and accepted wisdom on bike setup should not be blindly accepted…

People seem to get pretty hung up on a few relatively basic dimensions; Top tube length, Head angle, Seat angle, which do tell you a bit but everything is relative, I don’t think many people workout their wheelbase or their bar position relative to the rear axle or indeed their bar height relative to the ground, but there could well be some value in doing so…

+/-5mm worth of Stem stacker might make very little difference or could be critical, the only way to know is measure everything, make a change evalutate the changes and go again… 😀

I don’t think many people workout their wheelbase or their bar position relative to the rear axle or indeed their bar height relative to the ground, but there could well be some value in doing so…

I measure all my bikes by downtube as bar position relative to BB position is the important one..
rear axle to BB (chainstay length) dictates how stable/manouverable the bike is when pivoted around the rear axle so we should all have a preference for this or each style of bike/riding and choose accordingly.
BB height is a similar story and should be a much more important consideration when choosing a frame than it seems to be to most.
rear axle to bar height on it’s own wouldn’t help you much setting up controls between diferent frames. neither will wheelbase (on it’s own)

I measure all my bikes by downtube as bar position relative to BB position is the important one..

I’d say it’s One potentially important number but like I said a bike is a dynamic system, and every variable affects everything else, Bars relative to BB sit somewhere within the wider envelope of the whole bike,

A horizontal dimension (X) from the BB centre to the bars is what the mags like to call “effective Top tube” innit? but they don’t seem to measure Vertical distance (Y), your Down tube aligned method is a new one to me but achieves about the same sort of thing, it gives a useful reference between two key contact points on the bike… I can work out the position of any two points if I have a baselined X and Y dimension for each point.

Wheelbase is certainly not much use on its own, thats why I suggested people measure it along with just about everthing else they can.

Frinstance: WB minus bar tip longitudinal position tells you how far behind the front axle your bars are, possibly of use when your trying to gauge how a bike might behave on steep DH sections and/or if you are concerned about it becoming a barge on flats, same with rear axle to BB centre (Effective Chainstay like you said) Long can be stable at speed but hamper handling in technical sections, and you need to find the balancing point between the two…

I take the centre point of the rear wheel contact patch (Directly below the axle) as the ‘Zero’ point and just go from there in X and Y measuring the position of anything which I feel might matter (even if it doesn’t), better to get all the data you can than dismiss something as unimportant, you never know what might matter down the line…

Funny thing is that contact patch vertically below your rear axle constantly changes as soon as you leave a flat smooth surface, pump, compress or manual. Downtube length doesn’t

Any eff measurement is bollox IMO for this reason.

Downtube length is an accurate constant measurement which ties the two main control points together (steerer axis and BB spindle axis) this one measurement determines where the rider is positioned. Chainstay length, bb height, wheelbase and head angle/fork A-C, together determine how a frame rides before we even think about bar/stem and saddle positions.

Funny thing is that contact patch vertically below your rear axle constantly changes as soon as you leave a flat smooth surface, pump, compress or manual. Downtube length doesn’t

Yes…. And?

I’m not entirely sure why measuring a static bike is “bollox” its the best dimensional reference I can manage TBH, I’ll try applying the tape measure and calipers while I’m on the move but I think I’ll struggle to read them and jot numbers down, but you never know…

I’m not sure if you noticed but you did start listing some more key Dimensions in your previous post, bars to BB, BB height, Chainstays, chuck in a couple more (Wheelbase, saddle height, bar to saddle maybe?) and you are getting on for measuring up most of the bike one way or another…
So Bars to BB isn’t “the important one” it one of several important measurements, all of which interact to dictate the way the bike operates…

You were halfway to agreeing with me before… But that would be very Un-GW wouldn’t it… fair enough…

You can extrapolate static Dims to work out dynamic conditions if required, it ain’t rocket science…

Not sure what your objection is really, I’m just trying to be a bit more scientific in my understanding of bike setup, sounds like the “GW downtube rule” is just another excuse to be contrary and tell everyone they’re wrong about everything…

I purposely didn’t mention any measurement involving saddle position as it is massively adjustable (a good few inches fore and aft and over a foot and up and down) on any bike so that measurement doesn’t actually have a great deal to do with how the bike handles..
A bike’s saddle is only there to help with comfort, efficiency (it’s more tiring to stand) and for a third contact point with which to control the bike through weight shift (ie. fine tuning stability and grip) take the most technically skillful areas of cycling as an example and the saddle’s as low and out the way as possible.

Other than tradition, can you explain the meaningfulness of an imaginary horizontal measurement from the (top) centre of the headtube to an imaginary line through the centre of where a straight seatpost would be?

Oh.. and the reason your “rear axle to bars” measurement isn’t very useful is that the riders feet are supported somewhere between the two and exactly where that point is makes all the difference to how the bike handles.

The reach and stack measurements I’ve seen Ragley etc using make more sense to me that most of the other myriad dimensions. Bottom bracket to headset relationship. Who cares what the angle and length of the seat tube is as long as you can get the saddle high enough and in the right fore-aft position (bearing in mind post layback and saddle rails) for happy pedalling?

bar height is set so that it is low enough that I can load the front, while still high enough to feel comfortable descending and jumping.

Seat height depends on what I am riding.

That’s kinda along the lines of what i’m saying here Chief.
BB – Steerer axis is the most important measurement for frame fit, reach and stack is just a much more complicated way of tieing these two parts of the frame together. I’d like to see anyone make it work accurately with a tape measure to their bike in the real world let alone a bare frame.

eff (or imaginary) measurements are useless in anything other than brochures/magazines and drawings.. Who are they even marketted towards? fairly clueless folk I’d imagine.

I experimented with lowering my bars till it ruined my confidence/enjoyment then moved them back up a little. Then I measured the distance from the floor to the tip of the bars with the bike upright.

This gives me a starting point when I build up a new bike. 104cm if you must know 🙂

Fashions, “rules” and accepted wisdom on bike setup should not be blindly accepted…

Agreed! 8)

think I’ll try 104cm tho. sounds spot on! 😉