do find tight and twisty through trees gets a bit of a purposeful/methodical exrcercise rather than a fast flow though.

They’ll be going on a Bullit which isn’t really a good bike for tight and twisty singletrack anyway. It does have an extremely weighty front end thanks to some forks that are so heavy that they draw smaller forks into their orbit, and I’m wondering whether wider bars will help balance this out and just make it feel a bit more chuckable.

The switchbacks thing worries me a bit, how wide before you have to pull a move like the one depicted below, but at ground level, to get round a corner?

‘but try riding a slalom no handed and you will see how slow the bike changes direction without imput from the bars.’

Or – it’s much more difficult to get the bike to lean over hard with nothing to hold onto…

The input you put into the handlebars is essential granted, but you’re talking about very small forces, you shouldn’t be wrenching the bars about. If you can ride a bike you already counter steer etc, whether you know it or not. Personally I think people get into trouble and bad technique when they try and impart too much force and ‘steering’ into the handlebars. To ride a bicycle effectively off road you need to think about bodyweight distribution and the angle the bike leans much more than handlebar steering input. Or at least that’s the way my brain deals with it. Probably all semantics anyway… I’m off of to bed.

Anything wider than your shoulders serves no ergonomically beneficial purpose, and you look like a cock.

Anything wider than your shoulders serves no ergonomically beneficial purpose, and you look like a cock.

Dismissing something you’ve obviously never tried makes you sound like a cock 😉

I run 760mm Chromag bars on my DH bike & they are awesome. They just feel ‘right’ when you sit on the bike. I feel like I have more control in corners & especially on steep/rough trails.

I think that the extra width helps you support your weight & handle impacts better…

You don’t do a push up with your hands shoulder width apart do you?

When’s the last time you did a push up?!

I’m astonished that this thread has lasted so long over a completely subjective question. no matter what makes you comfortable on your bike will no doubt bring ridicule and comment from someone else. It’s like asking someone, “what’s the best car?” It’s purely decided by a number of important issues. Primarily cost, and then function, fit, colour, etc. Not forgetting advertising of course. Because nothing is any good unless they tell us it is….

Just ordered some of those Funn bars from CRC – think 710 will do for now and hopefully I can still get the bike in the house. 😛

Yeah, it’s definitely completely subjective. Despite being tall and consequently wide shouldered I hate riding on wide bars – anything over 26″ wide just feels completely uncomfortable and for me, makes the bike feel like a barge. Other people find completely the opposite… Try it and see, Mr_A 🙂

Oh and you can have a go on my RM – that’s got 23″ bars on it which I’m really feeling the love for, especially on singletrack. In fact, my SS now feels a bit wide at 25″ 🙂

If you are steering with your handlebars you are doing it wrong

Err – sorry to be thick, but I always thought that one of the roles of handlebars was to steer, i.e. change direction.

Am I missing something here? Am I meant to be wheelie-ing and then shifting weight in order to steer or something? 🙂

TJ’s got it wrong as usual and has applied something that’s partly true or true in some situations to all situations. He’s right about thesituation on the road where you don’t tend to steer so tightly or at low speed. When you lean, the shape of your bike tyres’ contact patch changes and effectively makes the wheel contact patch into a section of a cone shape – this is what turns the bike (roll a cone on a flat surface and it follows a curve)

At low speeds, you do steer the bike. At high speeds you don’t. In between, it’s a combination of the two.

In fact, here’s something to try on the road – when going round a sweeping bend try pushing forward on the inside grip (ie logically, this would steer you away from the bend) and see what happens (caveat – do this somewhere safe and I’m not responsible if you get it all wrong!)

Yeah, it’s not always as simple as turn handlebars left > go left.

I know this is a pic of a motorbike, but as Clubber says, push bikes can do it too.

I suspect that that guy is suffering from some oversteer though…

clubber – Member

TJ’s got it wrong as usual ……………. When you lean, the shape of your bike tyres’ contact patch changes and effectively makes the wheel contact patch into a section of a cone shape – this is what turns the bike (roll a cone on a flat surface and it follows a curve)

At low speeds, you do steer the bike. At high speeds you don’t. In between, it’s a combination of the two.

Its not the tyre deformation its the fact that you are no longer on the centre of the tyre. Tyre deformation actually reduces camber thrust so unfortunalty you are totally wrong on that

I did say that at very slow speeds you steer differently ie “like a car”

Please actually read what I wrote before critising me.

You have mistakes in your post.

powerslide! thats a fantastic picture..

re: wide bars – i run ea70 (675?) any wider and half my fave trails would be unrideable. i already bear the knuckle scars from moving to these.

on an open DH track i can see the advantages but for the everyday rider less so.

I used to have 685mm Answer Pro-Tapers on my hardtail and 710mm Diabolus on the big bike. I was happy with these but when I needed to replace the Answer due to damage I went for some 750mm Funn Full-on (Cheap on CRC).

They are currently on the Hardtail and it’s very amusing sqeezing them through the tight trees – lots of leaning over. Lofting the bike over jumps and manualing seems to have suffered a bit so I’m thinking they are overkill for this bike

I plan to swap them onto the big bike and bung the Diabolus on the Hardtail – my current thinking is that I like them wide… but I think the full 750 is a bit much on the hardtail. I’ll try them at full width on the big bike and if I’m not happy I can always cut them back to the same as the Diabolus.

The 23″ flat bars on my other bike now feel really sketchy.

Hmmm I’ll accept that I may have misread your posts TJ and accused you of making generalisations that don’t really hold true – In this instance, for that, I apologise.

“At low speeds, you do steer the bike. At high speeds you don’t. In between, it’s a combination of the two.”

This is only partly true. I know it’s not quite the same but there was a huge discussion about this on uk.rec.motorcycles. Basically, because a bike has a tendency to remain upright (once moving) in order to get it to turn you have to turn the bars to initiate a lean. From then on, leaning will steer the bike. This was proved by building a bike with two sets of bars, a normal set and one that didn’t turn. Trying to turn the bike by holding the fixed bars and leaning had no effect.

Cheers clubber. there was really only a fag paper between what we both appeared to be saying.

Its a hugely complicated thing steering bikes. If you had to think about it you would fall off! Impossible to state all the parameters in a short post

Wider bars help your balance. Just like whan you have your arms out from the sides when snowboarding/tightrope walking/surfing/walking along a kerb when pissed

I fall over more when I’m p!ssed with arms out than when sober with them by my sides 🙂

i would say there is an optimum width depending on your size. try doing a press-up with your arms too far apart, you have no strength.

standard eastons are fine for me, still scuff my knuckles plenty with that.

You should try leaving off the gin and holding the handlebars when riding yer bike clubber. I swear it’ll help.

I only drink Dark & Stormies when riding 😉

I’m astonished that this thread has lasted so long over a completely subjective question.

Really?

I think you can go too far. Anything over 700mm feels wrong to me, when your arms are too outstretched you lose power and the ability to make small readjustments. At 700 I can still get my elbows wider than my hands. Coming from snowboarding it also feels wierd having my feet fixed close together and my arms fixed wide apart.

I think I’m gonna go for the gusto and sell them/cut them down if they’re completely unworkable. Look out for a bloke with the facial hair and pose of Jesus, coming to a trail near you. 🙂

I’ve got Sunline V2’s uncut on my FS and Raceface Atlas AM again uncut on my HT.

Wide bars rule, end of

I bought some new sunline v1’s on sunday, picked them up thinking they were 711mm, was only when I fitted them that I noticed that they had 737mm stamped into them, very different to the 660’s I took off, but in a good way, might cut them down a bit as they do feel very wide.

I’ve been suffering bar inflation… The carrera I got back into riding with had a set of 560mm eastons, replaced those with the OEM bars which were 640mm, then fitted a set of eastons to my Scandal at 660mm, then when i got the soul fitted 680mm Truvativs. At this rate (10mm a month, more or less) I’ll not be able to reach the grips in a couple of years, I’ll need some sort of carbon fibre arm extensions.

I run Easton Havocs at the moment on my Enduro. As it’s primarily a trail centre/big mountain bike, I think this is just spot on. They’re pretty damned wide, but as there are very few really narrow tree sections to deal with, not a problem. There was one section on the decking at Penmachno that meant I had to stop to be sure of getting round, though.

At speed is where the benefit of big ape hangers really comes in to play. The extra leverage makes for a much more stable ride, as well as allowing better handling at speed.