Forum menu
Flared drops is personal thing. On the paper they are giving additional leverage whilst negotiating rough stuff, especially at speed.
From my personal experience I had very, very short stint with standard drop bars and went for flared quite early in my drop bared life.
Midge, Digest, Funn G-Wide and VentureMAX recently.
In the meantime I had few tries with standard and compact drop bars and frankly I cant use them anymore. Even at 440-460mm they are feeling too narrow, insecure and twitchy.
All down to personal preferences...
Cheers!
I.
Bike looks too big. I think you want lower controls but closer to you, hence you have rotated them back. Do you have any bend in your elbows when on the hoods? you should have about 15 degrees, not locked. That's a test of reach. Normally I'd swap to a shorter stem, but your stem is pretty short already.
Hi Tired, nah, if anything even the biggest bikes are too small for me - me being stiff and fat is more likely the issue.
However - update!
I did rotate the bars a clockwise again about 5 degrees, reduced the reach on the brake levers, and fitted a 170mm dropper (I had one brand x spare, so its a straight swap, and, you know, why not!)
The former now gives me a quite marvellous feeling perch for powering onwards (lovely feeling gripping the hoods, tucking the elbows in and cranking it).
The brake lever tweak now means the drops (or rather, the 'hooks' as I believe it is called) are being more often used.
The dropper combined with more confidence in the drops/hooks means that descents are now riotous fun!
Cheers all, extremely helpful.