Fitting aero bars to mtb straight bars

I love my aero bars on my road bike, they just suit me and I find them comfortable.

I’d like to experiment with them on my rigid mtb I use for bike packing. When I cycle to my brother in law it’s 55 miles of canals, old railway lines and cycle lanes and I keep thinking aero bars would work for me.

I’ve got some profile bars with the proper shims to reduce from 31.8 to 25.4. The only problem is the bars I’m using don’t have a big enough 31.8 section and the 25.4 is too far out so the aero bars are fitted at an angle.

Can anyone recommend a straight aluminium bar I can use. I don’t want to run a 25.4 bar with a shim if I can help it.

Anyone else running aero bars on a mtb? Please share your photos. All my friends just think im wierd. ?

Thanks

I’ve done it for a couple of bikepacking trips. They work fairly well on longer road sections and don’t seem to get in the way at any other time. I was using some Thomson Ti flat bars

Have you considered a different set of tribars? The profile for speed bars clamp on 31.8 bars but the forearm rest can be moved a long wat forward and backwards and left and right.

You will find them cheap on ebay etc. Dont buy the one where the clamp is fixed to the forearm rest.

I came across something called a Fred bar when looking for a solution to a similar problem.  Bit expensive but might work for you?

https://fredbars.com/products/fred-bar

Basically a mini-handlebar that attaches to your stem.

https://planetx.co.uk/products/selcof-expedition-handlebar These – can often be found a bit cheaper on PX, I think mine were £25 or so.

Or https://youtu.be/iOCKl8UAypo?si=dVAo0Jc1yFX67lZ7 these if you can find them – I have some that I mount inboard of everything which creates a similar setup to the bar above. Unfortch Decathlon seem to have stopped selling them, or I just can’t find them on their site.

I have the Fred bar.

Expensive solution but solve a whole raft of issues.

@branes that’s exactly what I have at the moment, some L bend bar ends in board.

I have the Fred bar.

This is what I love about stw. You come up with things like this that I would never have found on my own.

The only issue is my bar set up is pretty good. If I remove the spacers and drop my stem to fit this then my bars are lower down. My steerer is uncut so I have the space. Hmmmmm

https://www.sjscycles.co.uk/accessories/thorn-accessory-bar-t-shaped-55-mm-extension-222-mm-0-deg/

This is very similar for a quarter of the price, I’ve got  several

@pistonbroke that looks great and it’s lighter but it’s 22mm diameter. The Fred bar is 31.8 which Im after but it’s expensive for what it is.

This is very similar for a quarter of the price, I’ve got  several

It looks similar if you have never seen. A Fred bar in the flesh I’ll admit…. But really it’s not close.

I was trying to find a couple of decent photos of my set up but only came up with these two.

Probably not much help.

Rigs of the 2024 Tour Divide (Part One): Flat-Bar Bikes

Some very very high up aero bars on the flat bar bikes of the tour divide

Loads of long distance bike Packers run them. If you want to do endless research try here

https://bikepacking.com/bikes/bikepacking-race-rigs/

I ran aero bars on MTB touring in the 2000’s for 3 trips.

I thought they gave an extra gear of speed for free on the flat especially into the wind. I only used them on road, never thought to try them off road at the time. My max trip length was 8 days.

The ControlTech Scirocco is available with two mounting arrangements, one of which clamps around the stem, rather than the bars. They are very expensive new, but if you keep an eye on eBay, 2nd hand ones occasionally come up much cheaper.

Check out Salsa and Ritchey bars, maybe Alpkit also? Some of their models are aimed at Bikepacking/touring so have a longer straight middle section for clamping stuff onto.

Farr do some interesting stuff too (although I’ve no idea how good it is).

https://ridefarr.co.uk/