Hi Chaps,

After my missus falling off and hurting herself quite badly a couple of weeks ago, she’s not wanting to be using drop bars.

Can anyone suggest a decent flat bar road bike?

I know about….

Ridgeback Flight
Cannondale Badboy
Boardman Hybrid
Vitus Mach 3

Any other suggestions?

I would convert her road bike to flat bar, but it’s not going to be as cheap as selling her road bike and buying a flat bar bike (her road bike was a bargain).

cheers

Ricks

Was the fall related to drop bars?

I fell and broke my arm just before Christmas, I can ride drops more comfortably for now as the ‘flat’ bits are uncomfortable!

If it’s a mental thing, tell her to WTFU 😛 my missus refuses to use drops as she thinks they look scary, then spends rides complaining about how sore her arms and hands are gettign while I merily swap hand positions every few minutes.

Yep – she just feels unstable on the road bike in general. She’s had a road bike with flat bars before and was more than happy on that. She’s a decent enough rider, but she now just hates the road bike.

Spesh has a decent range – used to be the Sirrus but now is called the Vita.

Boardmans are a good choice. Good spec for the money.

Have a look at Scott too, they have a few flat bars in their range.

Remembr to go up a size if the frames are the same to account for the loss of the hoods.

I’m thinking of gettig the missus those butterfly bars for a quiet life.

Trek FX+ WSD if you lurve her 😉

OK, I said she didn’t like drops, not that she was a ponce – Trek FX+, £2K!?

She wants something that has race geometry, but with a flat bar similar to:

Rose do some nice bikes too:

http://www.rosebikes.co.uk/article/rose-multiroad-pro-wsl-200-triple/aid:559841

Try some wider bars perhaps, and raise them up? Might make it feel better. Cheaper then going for a new bike.

EDIT: also more compact drops could help, really deep bars are tricky to get used to. But road bikes are twitchy, and do take a while to get used to. Hybrids are for riding to the shops.

Yep – I understand that she really should be on a road bike, she rides a commuter to work an hour each day, so is more than used to riding on skinny tyres on the road.

I pushed her into selling the flat bar road bike, and sorted her out a nice Trek 2.3 road bike – but she’s just not confident on it at all.

Like I said, she’s a decent enough rider – but I personally don’t want her falling off again like she did, and that was on the flat, in the middle of the road at rush hour – just because she lifted a hand to indicate.

Try some wider bars perhaps

I’ve got 44’s on my road bike ar the moment, hate them for 101 reasons, starting with the width makes the drops inacessible as you can’t reach around the tops to get to them. wide bars work off road in certain situations (downhill, on wide open tracks), for everything else there’s narrow bars (the ones on my tourer are tiny!) .

I got a Giant Rapid 3 for commuting last year, can’t fault it so far.

You realise 99% of the posts will be cliche filled nonsense about it being essential to ride drops on the road.

Anyway… Top tube length is definitely something to check. Ridgeback and Boardman have longer TT’s on their flat bar bikes to account for the lack of length in the bars, some others just stick a flat bar on the road bike frame. Pretty much all the big manufacturers seem to make flat bar versions now. I quite liked the Flight when i tried it.

This is a bit of a deal –

http://www.evanscycles.com/products/scott/sub-40-solution-2011-hybrid-bike-ec025454

Reduced from £449 to £299..

I got some flat bar shifters (R440) very cheap from Chainreaction a while back for that reason – they’re not always cheap but if you keep an eye out. Add in 2nd hand bars, stem, grips and brake levers for a pittance and it was certainly cheaper than changing the whole bike. If you sell the STIs (have kept mine in case I change my mind) then even better still.

Of course, if you want a different kind of bike – perhaps more laid back + bigger tyres, then a swap’s your best option.

Maybe I’ll convince her to let me convert the 2.3 to a flat bar then.

The indexing is the same on a road 10sp isn’t it, so no issue with using XT 10sp pods, and some nice levers too…..

Thinking about it I think I have an Easton EC90 carbon flat bar in the shed…..

Definitely got me thinking now.

I have a flat barred road bike and use it all the time on club runs.
You do need specific brake levers to convert it,not mountain bike ones.My LX levers felt terrible until i changed them to some specific flat barred ones(CRC).
A couple of problems.
The top tube length is shorter so not the most efficient position for pedalling.
After fitting bar ends,which felt a lot better,i have numb fingers after a ride which never goes away because i use the bike regularly.
Not sure if its the stiffness of the flat bar,unpadded bar ends or riding position.