Originally Posted by
headasunder
I have a lot of experience on drop bars, all my tandem riding has been flatbars by which i mean mtb style risers and flat I dont have any experience riding modern mtb singles and am amazed at the handlebar widths available and wondered if tandem riders with flat as opposed to drop bars run super wide bars or not, there is not a good resource for tandem riding here in the "shaky isles"
Our first nice tandem was a 700C flatbar roadbike. The stock bars were 65cm wide and I had the shop cut 20mm off each end before I even took it for a test ride (I had already paid for it). It now has 44cm dropbars. 42cm is my usual dropbar roadbike size. I don't know how you cut carbon bars but I believe that they can be cut. Some bars I've seen have the cut lines scribed right on them to make it easy. I just got a bike with the Jones bars another poster mentioned. They are 70cm and MUCH too wide for me. I would give them to you but they aren't carbon. They might not even be aluminum! Just for grins I measured the bars on the Stoker compartment of our present flatbar tandem. 62cm end to end. That is a reasonable width for someone who would use a 42cm roadbike dropbar or 44cm on a dropbar tandem. I used to have those bars up front but now I steer it with an FSA Metropolis riser bar.