New wide bars – how long to get used to it?

Gone from 680mm (I think, Answer Pro Taper) to a Rental Fatbar. It’s also a new frame. How long did / do / would you give wider bars to see if you like them before getting the hacksaw out? At the moment they feel massive. It was only a 10 minute poodle, not a ‘proper’ ride though.

Cheers

precisely zero seconds.

compared to 685’s, 760’s felt like coming home, after a really crap day at work.

CHuck yourself down a fast descent, you’ll quite quickly forget they’re there

I’d day one or two proper rides.

What you’d find even more dramatic is trying to ride a narrow bar like your old one afterwards.

Took me a long while. Probably 10 rides or more. Stick with it, you’ll have this epiphany moment and never want to go back.

I gave it 2 rides. On my 2nd the bars caught a tree throwing me off an embankment. Another tree stopped my fall and winded me, but that was better than the fall to the bottom.

Cut the bars down as soon as got home.

Maybe next time i’ll try for longer and avoid super tight tree lined trails. See if I can get the epiphany moment.

Are they in line with your forks?

Depends how wide. I went from 650 or so to 760 and it took one descent. Not sure I’d be happy with much wider though.

700 to 780, maybe a ride before the feeling of ‘this is odd’ changed to ‘this is soooo much better’.

760s feel weird to me now, 800’s seem to give me a nice square, open chested attack position as well. Considering 810s as it feels nicer when I run my hands right at the edge of the bars but that runs the risks of your hands rolling off on nasty hits.

Trails that haven’t been updated to suit new trends in riding, eg parts of Cannock – irritate me to no end.

As that new film “The Untold Story of British Mountain Biking” showed, MTBers used to run nice wide bars – probably because of the influence of “tracker” bikes – but then the roadies came along and ruined it for everyone.

Never. I put wide bars on. Rode with them a few times. Took them off again. Gave me a ridiculous uncomfortable riding position and I couldn’t get between some trees on a ride I do often. That was going from 680 to 740. Simply didn’t get on with them.

Wide as **** bars are old school cool. 😀

if the new frame is the same size as your old frame then you will probably never get used to them unless your frame was too small to start with, wider bars will make you more stretched out unless you are compensating elsewhere

Thanks all.

My typical rides don’t have width issues so I don’t need to worry about being thrown over the bars.

I’ll be sure to give them a few rides waiting for the epiphany to come.

Went from 685’s on Soul and 711’s on soda to 762’s on the Solaris.

I thought, I’ll try them out just to see before I cut them down… did a four hour shakedown ride and over four years later I’ve still not chopped anything off.

As long as you’re not riding anything too narrow then there’s no real dis benefit in my book. But I’ve tended to wider than (XC) normal, when my mates where running Renthal flat bars (cut down!) I had Azonic World Force DH bars (albeit chopped down a bit, forget what width now) on my XC hardtail (Kona Explosif).

Did you shorten the stem at the same time? Over the past few years I’ve went from 680mm to 720mm to 800mm bars and they felt instantly better each increase.

Tom_W1987 – Member
760s feel weird to me now, 800’s seem to give me a nice square, open chested attack position as well. Considering 810s as it feels nicer when I run my hands right at the edge of the bars but that runs the risks of your hands rolling off on nasty hits.

New Ergon grips give about 10mm of comfy extra length either side of your bar

Will still role my hands off, so might try both.