I’ve been trying out some bikes and it seems that the long low slack trend can lead to the stack height being low making the front end fall away too much on steep descents. I’m tall and long in the leg so find I’m more comfortable on an xl frame. I think cos I’m long in the leg I’m high up on the bikes so the bars feel low even with the stem at the top of the steerer.

Do any other tall riders out there have this issue? How did you fix it? I’d love a full suss 29er but not sure I’ll find one that doesn’t feel crazy low at the front.

Fit some riser bars

They don’t seem to come in any more than about 5cm rise.

Do any other tall riders out there have this issue?

Yes, headtubes are far too short on XL frames these days.

How did you fix it?

Spacers under the stem and riser bars.

If you’re lucky, the shop might be able/willing to leave the steerer uncut on your fork

(no idea – do shops do this much prep or do frames arrive with pre-cut forks ? If so, they still might swap it over to a “new” one for a fee)

You can get riser stems but maybe not in fashionable 40mm lengths

What are you riding? I think a lot of this comes down to technique and people compensate for poor technique by jacking the front end up high.

I’m riding an XL Helius AC with a 150 mm head tube on a 140mm Fox 36. Stem has just a 5mm spacer underneath and bar s a 15mm rise. A week in the Basque Country riding super steep tech and the bars never feel low or an Otb risk. Heels down, wrists down. Jacking up the front with a high rise bar just means the bike won’t go uphill and takes your weight off the front wheel when you’re descending.

I’ve owned a 26 inbred, blue pig, trance, mojo hd3 and voodoo bizango 29er. The voodoo fits me better than the others ever have. I rode a WHYTE S150 yesterday and it was amazing but felt a tad low up front but I loved the reach and general ride position. I quite fancy the T129 if I can get a ride and find one. I have just found some riser bars that go up to 3 inches so that might be the answer. Like you say you don’t want the bars too high for climbing reasons but I’m a bit of a freak in the inside leg measurements. Puts me high up in the bike!

Interesting to here other lanky folks findings. I think proportions are a critical point here rather than just height.

What are you riding? I think a lot of this comes down to technique and people compensate for poor technique by jacking the front end up high.

Sometimes. But the slammed bar and stem fad was just that, a fad. The Dhers have gone back to spacers under the bars and/or risers… coupled to 200mm forks.

I like my Enduro bike set up like a mini dh bike. So it makes sense to run the bars at a similar height, part of the reason why DH bikes are faster down long runs is simply because you the rider are stopped over the bike like some XC rider. You are tucked in behind the forks and rise, in a nice relaxed and neutral position.

And slamming the bars for front end grip is quick fix for piss poor technique, the only thing you need to do is get the heaviest organ in your body over the front… your head.

This is one of the reasons I build up a bike rather than off the shelf. Means I can leave the steerer long and then play with heights until I’m happy.

Saying that though I did read somewhere about technique as mentioned above so have been incrementally lowering my stem since. I’m down 10mm from where I started with no I’ll effects so there must be some validity to it to an extent. Tall folk are still gonna be tall and bikes aren’t designed with us in mind so do what feels right for you.

heaviest organ in your body over the front…

Your liver.

Yea I’ve been riding long enough and I’ve been uncomfortable enough to know what works for me. It can take a long time to find the perfect fit and geometry but I feel I’m very close now. Having said that there is always a bit of compromise when you want a bike to do everything. That was big ride I did on the S150 and I have less pain today than usual.

Your liver.

Yup, youre right… after skin it would seem. Still, your cranium as a whole is a huge lump of mass that is enough to help guide a motorbike.

Here. Stack and reach for many of the bigger bikes out there:
http://forums.mtbr.com/clydesdales-tall-riders/stack-reach-charts-pretty-much-all-xl-bikes-1043334.html

I think a lot of this comes down to technique and people compensate for poor technique by jacking the front end up high.

Nonsense. Quite a lot of this comes down to some of us having to ride bikes that were never designed for taller people. The geometry and frame proportions don’t really work at extremes.
Also – personal choice and personal physiology. Otherwise everyone (including DH racers) would be riding slammed stems with flat bars. They don’t.

Renthal bars go up to about 40mm rise.

Would that not be enough?

Yea should do it. Wow that spreadsheet puts mine to shame! Good find! You rarely see anyone do a bike review on an XL do you? I wonder how many manufacturers try to ensure they’re bikes perform similarly over all sizes. Of course there will be differences but….

I love a low stack height on a long travel forked bike. Had to go stem slammed & flat bar for a position i liked so i feel your pain but in an opposite way

Stooge Moto bar?

40mm spacers under the stem, 40mm riser bar and a riser stem should be more than high enough.

Be careful of running the front too high, as it shifts your weight off the front wheel (as you raise the bars, they also move back) and then you will find the front end has less grip.

I like a higher front end too – usually I’ll be running a different fork with 10/20mm more travel than bike comes with, long steerer tube and high rise bars. Chromag, Spank and Renthal do nice high rise alu bars. Although if you are looking at the S150 it comes with a custom offset fork so you might think of using a different air shaft to up the travel rather than a different fork.

Check the headtube length and stack height on the bikes and that’ll help you decide.

I think you should get used to it. Low stack height goes with the geom to give you more grip. Its all about weight over the front whilst not risking otb.

I think you’re getting another change in geometry mixed up with stack height.
Your Voodoo Bizango has a 110mm head tube, 63mm BB drop and a2c length is about 530mm. Head angle 69.5 deg. So, doing some sums, the stack height is about 667mm static and 645mm sagged.

That’s halfway between the static stack of an L and XL S150, but being full-sus bikes once sagged their stack will increase a bit, so they’re actually taller, not lower.

Maybe what you noticed was the S150 being much longer in reach?

If you’re looking secondhand check out a Orange 5 29. The head tube on mine was huge.

And slamming the bars for front end grip is quick fix for piss poor technique

Depends on what youre setting the bike up for – requirements for a bike that’s going to spend its time uplifted and pointing down steep tracks is different to something that will ride all day. You can just the bars up high and get your weight forward when standing to descend but it will compromise seated climbing – the front will lift earlier (or your climbing position gets ever more awkward and contorted)

And that stack height on all your other bikes (Inbred, Blue Pig, etc) is way lower.

Basically the long/low trend increases stack height for a given head tube length because the bottom bracket is getting lower. And then bigger wheels increase it further. The slacker head angle lowers it a little but not a lot, especially as that tends to go with longer travel and/or stiffer forks (long axle-crown) length.

If the OP reckons he needs the bar higher then I think we can take his word for it. It’s such a personal thing.

I have mine lower than most people as I kind-of have the opposite body shape to him. Short legs, long body, short arms.

It’s obvious when riding if the bar is too low on steep descents or too high for climbing.

You rarely see anyone do a bike review on an XL do you? I wonder how many manufacturers try to ensure they’re bikes perform similarly over all sizes.

I think Seb Stott at Bikeradar is a tall guy, I know he reviewed the Mega 290 in XL anyway.

Another thing with XL frames is the chainstays usually being the same length as on the small and medium bikes. I’d definitely want to try a few with longer chainstays if I were you, for a more balanced feel.

The aforementioned Mega 290, Cotic’s 29ers, Orange Stage 5 and 6, new Intense Carbine if feeling flush.

If the OP reckons he needs the bar higher then I think we can take his word for it. It’s such a personal thing.

Sure. But that doesn’t mean the newer bikes have low stack height. The most recent Blue Pig has 635mm stack in the largest size and the biggest 26″ one’s stack is about 580mm, both unsagged, so they’ll be lower in practice.

All the named bikes are much shorter reach than the S150.

I’m “only” 6′ tall and still struggle to get the bars where I want them on some bikes. I was always taught that, on a mountain bike, the bars should be roughly level with the saddle at normal riding height and that’s always worked well for me.

It’s all personal of course, but what I don’t get is why manufacturers keep the reach roughly the same on different models but not the stack. Take the Orange stage 29ers for example. A large Stage 6 has a reach of 462 and a stack of 643. A large Stage 4, on the other hand still has a reach of 461, but a stack of 615.

Is that difference in stack about the same as the difference in fork travel?

Yes, pretty much. So it looks as though they set the reach for the height of the rider, but just make the stack as low as they can. The problem (for me) is that the stack then ends up too low on the shorter travel bike.

Yea the longer top tube will definitely be a factor. I run the bizango forks really stiff and I have quite a lot of steerer to play with and it fees about right if not a little short on reach.

The biggest factor for me when it comes to climbing has always been seat post angle rather than bar height. Never had trouble getting weight over the front. This has been an interesting discussion thanks for everyone’s input. Nice to hear about other talker folks experiences.

I have long legs as well and most XLs are set up with the bars way too low as standard. The right shop will sort you out with spacers and a rider bar. I had a Smuggler before it had a decent headtube on it.

I read a lot of stuff about keeping the front end low. If you’re too tall you can just end up folded over the front of the bike. Look at the way your shorter mates have their bikes set up. A lot of them will have their bars far higher than you do in relation to their hips.

I think this “weight over the front” thing is a bit of a red herring. When climbing it is really the seat angle that stops the front lifting. When descending you bend from the hips so that your shoulders are over the bars and arms nicely bent. If you’ve got the flexibility and the core strength to cope with a lower front end then I can see that could be better (lower CoG), but if not you either end up with your arms too straight (lack of flexibility) or too much weight on the front (lack of core strength).

For pedalling standing up, particularly singlspeeding, you can definitely have the bars too high (having to pull on them with a bent arm) or low (wrong hip angle, too much back involvement). For sitting down, some handlebar pulling is needed to keep your weight forward and if your bars are too high that means arms too bent and so again that is tiring.

I find reach/height most important when gently climbing slippery terrain sitting down. I need to get weight over the rear wheel and bars too low/far away make that difficult. Longer chainstays exacerbate this.

For all round riding, it really is a compromise that depends on your and your bike’s precise geometry, and what you want to ride on.

https://photos.app.goo.gl/2bkaqcfhuY3SSj6T2

Here’s my T129s so suit my 36″ inside leg. Riser stem + riser bars. I’ve found the saddle has to be forward to avoid tipping backwards when climbing but I’m hoping taking volume spacers out and running a lower sag will effectively make the seat angle steeper.

Is that an xl frame? My legs are about 35″ but I wouldn’t have that much seat tube showing.

I think this “weight over the front” thing is a bit of a red herring.

Oh gosh I don’t, only for cornering, I can’t comment on climbing, nor do I care.
I had some coaching and it was revealed to me how much more grip I got through pinning the front down. Then I got a better geom bike (Bandit) and set it up with only one 5mm spacer below the stem I found a whole new world of cornering. The best thing is that with low stack you don’t have to commit too much body movement to weight changes, it is more subtle. I rode a Nukeproof Mega the other day and that was even more awesome in the long and low dept.

Interesting. I’m 6’4″ with 35″ inside leg. Pretty long all over 😀
I tested the Bird Aeris-120-nx11 a couple of months back. It has long reach and low stack. Whilst I found that it absolutely railed corners, the low stack threw me too far forward on steeper bits of descents (I’m used to descending steep, rubble strewn terrain at a decent lick). It was okay but a bit disconcerting. More of an issue though was the sore neck after a couple of hours riding. I felt like I’d spent a few hours in the drops of a road bike. I ended up buying a 2017 Trance 2, which seems to be a very good compromise between long, low and slack without being too extreme. It has an issue with the back breaking away under heavy cornering, but I suspect that’s to do with the Giant wheel (I’ve already swapped out the tyre for my usual)

It was okay but a bit disconcerting.

It felt weird at first but I have had much less OTB moments since going low stack. I guess it is horses for courses but I had two major problems before coaching, OTB and losing the front/washing out. Low stack was counter intuitive but now I am low and behind my bars, instead of really high and above them..

it seems that the long low slack trend can lead to the stack height being low making the front end fall away too much on steep descents.

That’s why droppers are so popular nowadays. Front is low, now you can easily get your arse low to match.

I think this “weight over the front” thing is a bit of a red herring.

Oh gosh I don’t

Depends on the corner. Short tight corners on twisty trails are a different thing to fast wider ones.

Sorry, I didn’t mean to imply that pushing the front down was irrelevant, just that I can’t see why slightly higher bars makes that harder. If you adopt the same position on both then raising the bars a few cm just means that your elbows are slightly more bent. If anything that should make it easier to push the front end down when you want to.