calamarichris

For all who've ridden both vintage aluminum handlebars and the current compact carbon bars: Have you noticed that it is easier to sustain a fluid standing pedal form when climbing with vintage bends than with the new bars?


For years I've been riding my beloved Lemond with these carbon 3T Ergonova Team handlebars, a threadless adaptor and the 7800 brifters, and they're VERY comfortable in the tops, drops, and hoods when seated.


But I never really felt comfortable when standing. I always attributed this to getting older, heavier, and less fit. But today I put on my Scott Drop-In replica bars (made by Nitto, branded Specialized, which have the horizontal lowers, as pictured below), and when I stood to climb, it felt as though my bike were being pushed by angels! I'm not sure if it's because I'm slightly more forward on the bike, or if my elbows are not bunched rearward, or if my wrists are straight instead of rotated awkwardly rearward, but it feels much, MUCH easier and more fluid to stand and pedal!


Has anyone else experienced this? Any idea what's going on?

Here are some older pics of me standing to climb, on a non-vintage bike.





And here's one on a vintage Look, but with the 3T Ergonova bars where you can plainly see how my elbows are bent inward & awkward.




Anyone else noticed this? I'm getting ready for l'Etape California on Sunday and while I'm feeling great about my preparation (seated), I wish I'd changed to these vintage Nitto Drop-Ins a long time ago.

gaucho777 

No experience with carbon bars, but you're looking good in that La Vie Claire jersey!

I've read several articles about the effects of planing with not-super-stiff frames (for example, David Kirk on Frame Flex, and Jan Heine's What Is Planing?). I wonder if there is any possible correlation with flexible vintage bars/stems.

Good luck with the l'Etape de California! It sounds brutal. Channel your inner LeMond.

superdex

are they narrower?

calamarichris

Grazzi. Always fun to be the lone bulldog at the greyhound convention at the Baldy finish line. Also almost always the only steel frame in the whole shebang as well.
I'm reasonably certain these carbon bars and the mountain-bike-style threadless stem are quite stiff. I'm almost positive it's really more of a position issue.

Nearly identical at the brifters. The new carbon bars are 42, but are flared, which means they're closer to 40 at the brifter mount point.
The alloy bars are straight 40's.
There's definitely something to a wider bar (I have 52s on my dogbike and standing on that bike is a novel sensation.) but this is not the width, more of a fore-aft sensation.

Salamandrine 

Your wrist angle does look a little strained in the second pic. At some point I measured, and figured out that vintage levers were about 1.5" or a bit more below were modern levers are, given the same bar height at the tops. Have you tried rotating your bars down just a bit? It might be worth lowering the lever position on the bars a few millimeters or so as well.

I blame Lance for this. He's the one that popularized the back tilted 'tourist' bar and lever position for racers. In earlier times, the lower you had your levers, the cooler you were. They were way out front, and the drops were near parallel with the ground. For me, tilting too far back makes the drops uncomfortable, and the brakes difficult to use from a drop position. Best position becomes sort of a compromise.

Anyhow. I think you can tweak your modern bars for better climbing out of the saddle. I'm pretty much completely comfortable on both modern and vintage bars climbing on the hoods, but it took a bit of experiment and small adjustment to get there. A few mm can make a big difference.

calamarichris

Thanks Sal.
Yeah, I fiddled with the modern carbon bars, but the abrupt bend that give us such a comfortable & broad interface in the drops kind of narrows the possible range of brifter mount options. If you shift the brifters a little down, the levers angle down & back to the point of no longer working. I will fiddle with them more after l'Etape. But I do really like the look (and especially the feel when standing & climbing) of the drop-ins.


(These are the actual [noodly af] Scott Drop-Ins mounted on my Hot-Dog-on-a-Stick bike.)

As much as I loath him, I don't think we can blame Armstrong; he just happened to be making the headlines when brifters became popular.

This isn't a "marginal gains" difference. My standing form feels utterly transformed with these vintage bars. Feels so much more fluid, natural, and powerful than the unsettled, wobbly feeling of the carbon bars.

BFisher

I have not noticed any difference, but then again, I never really thought about it (now I'll feel it, lol). I go between Specialized Tarmac bend bars, and old ITM bars, with some SR Road Champions here and there.

Maybe just personal preference for a bit more reach? More leverage when your hands aren't as close to your body?

Bandera

Quite the opposite for me.
I still ride a good number of fixed gear miles in rolling terrain where standing to get up and over is a critical technique/style.
Scouting possible new FG routes on my CF road bike shifted into the same 70GI as the FG I've found that standing using the larger more ergonomic 'brifter hoods provides better leverage and more comfort than the '80's style aero levers fitted to the FG. When it's time to overhaul again I'm fitting Easton CF shallow drop bars and Shimano 5700 levers to the FG w/ an adapter & 31.8 Easton stem.
That which works, Works.
No Period Correct Police approval necessary.

-Bandera

DMNHCAGrandPrix

Are you hands on the lower drop-in extensions when you get that "pushed by angels" feeling? Could be very different wrist angle, but I wonder if you are also now more bent at waist from having hands lower in front. More waist bend when standing -> more activation of hip extensors -> more angels to help with climb?

(Like bending forward to help stand up from a chair.)

crank_addict

Rare to find, Modolo made a copy of these bars but with the top radius more like a criterium bar. Also stiffer than the Scott drop-in.

Regrets I gave them away along with a LeMond.

calamarichris

After sleeping on it, I'm beginning to think it's most likely the upward/rearward cant of the brifters which crumple my wrists, and subsequently elbows into a less secure position. This pic seems to confirm it. I vaguely remember trying to lean back to allow my wrists and elbows the room to unfold, but it just felt weird as heck, like when you're shifting your weight on a steep/slippery climb to keep traction; only sustained for several minutes--it was a mess.


I usually opt toward vexing the Period Correct Police in my build choices, but I'm actually finding that a quill stem and alloy bars feel much, much better than the carbon bars with "mtb-stem." Now I'm going to have to find another way to earn their disapproval.

calamarichris

Not in the drops at all, but clutching the brifter hoods, as in the above photo. To be perfectly honest, I don't spend a lot of time down in those drop-ins, as much as the inward curve at the bottom; it's a very comfortable and very secure spot that the base of the thumb muscle naturally falls in to. (Turns out that's called the "thenar eminence".)

Any idea what they were called? Google's got nothing.
These Nitto/Specialized bars aren't perfectly aligned like the Scott Drop-Ins are, bur those Scotts were just too noodly and I removed them immediately after two hours. Horrifying to watch those bar-ends rotate around each other, flexing more than an inch away from each other; and it's not like I'm torquing those bars very hard.

BFisher

@calamarichris,

As I look closer at your brifters, the idea of the upward cant makes a lot of sense. They do seem to come up pretty high, more that the brifters on my Sora R3000 setup:

I have not experienced that kind of wrist position while climbing, and it certainly does look uncomfortable.
Oh, and beautiful bikes and dog, btw.

calamarichris

It's a difficult thing to see in pics. I vaguely remember seeing Boonen in 2010 Flanders will his brifters mounted high on the bars, and then watching him struggling as Cancellara rode away from him--watching him resonated, because that's how I've felt when standing all this time.

I never really felt like they looked high, but I guess I'll experiment with lowering them on the plastic-fantastic carbon bars.



Getting ready to head out for an easy standing-climbing ride, but have to take it very easy as I want fresh legs for l'Etape in 3 days.

Classtime 

Bring your allen keys so you can rotate the bars for an easy way to get those hoods down where they could be on traditional drop bars.

Salamandrine 

Maybe try leaving the levers where they are, but instead loosen the stem and rotate the whole bar assembly a couple degrees? I kind of think if you get the levers in the same relative location and angle with respect to your bike and body, they should feel the same, or close to it.

Also, there are lots of variations in ergo bars today. Some are softer and in between the old and new. Plus, there are a lot of traditional bend carbon bars out there lately. I've read that some the current pros prefer them.

canklecat

Frame geometry, reach, drop, bar bends, placement of brakes/hoods. All of it adds up.

I'm 5'11", with somewhat longer than average arms and thighs. I'm comfortable with 56-60cm frames, with the usual adjustments to suit the bike.

I'm most comfortable standing as erect as possible for out-of-saddle pedaling, and feel best on my Univega Via Carisma (58cm or 60cm, I'm not sure how Univega measured their frames). I'm on my third set of handlebars in three years, going from flat and riser bars with upward-angled stem slightly above saddle height; to horizontal/zero-angle stem and albatross bars at saddle height. It feels natural. And this bike and albatross bar are fairly noodly, with a longer wheelbase than my road bikes. I vary my hand position from the grips to the forward arc of the albatross bar, with only a small adjustment in my body position to maintain good balance.

I have a 58cm Centurion Ironman with typical period aero brake hoods. It's set up pretty close to 1960s-'70s racing style, stretched out with less drop between bar and saddle compared with the trend of the past decade. After lots of experimenting I've settled on the conventional drop bar with the drops tipped slightly down so my wrists are straight. I've moved the hoods up about an inch. And I've switched from a 120mm (or longer) stem to 90mm to reduce reach and neck strain. Much better than the original factory setup, which felt unbalanced when standing to pedal. Too much weight forward rather than going into using body weight to stomp the pedals. My compromise adjustment works better for standing.

And I have a '93 Trek 5900, 56cm. With the aero brakes/hoods and drops comparable to a compact version of my Ironman's drops, the bike felt slightly unbalanced compared with the Ironman, but that's because of the Trek's original Ibis titanium stem, which is very long for me, around 130-140mm. After a few rides I adapted, but wasn't as comfortable as standing to pedal on my Ironman (and neither road bike feels as well balanced and efficient as the Univega for standing).

About a month ago I switched the Trek 5900 to MicroShift brifters, which are comfortable but much longer than the 1980s Suntour GPX and Shimano 600 brake hoods. So it took another few rides to adapt to the new, lower, forward balance while standing.

The road bikes don't look radically different in setups, but the balance feels very different.

In actual practice, my typical speed on the same familiar climbs is about the same with all three bikes, when standing to stomp uphill. But they feel very different. My quads start burning sooner with the road bikes, especially the Trek. Just a bunch of small differences that are significant when added up.

My solution for now has been to adjust my body position to suit the bikes. I lock my elbows on the Trek 5900 to get as upright as possible to shift more weight back. It's less aero but feels more efficient.

Based on these experiences, if we had significant climbs here (we don't, it's mostly rollers with lots of short, steep sprint-climbs), I'd probably prefer a slightly large (for me) frame, 58-60cm, to keep the bar top almost level with the saddle, and a shorter stem for a comfortable reach. It wouldn't be as aero for downhills and flat terrain. But it would suit me better for climbing.

But a 54-56cm frame with lower bar and appropriate stem length would accomplish pretty close to the same thing.

Reminds me, I need to video myself on the road bikes to check fit. I've done that before and it helped with bike fit issues.

canklecat

BTW, the other night I was watching parts of the 1990 Tour de France and noticed Greg LeMond's bike had the Scott drop-in bar on some stages. But I never saw him actually using the low drop-ins on the videos. I think I saw him start to reach for the low drop-ins once toward the end of the mountain stage where he was overtaken by Miguel Indurain in the last kilometer. But he didn't actually use them. He might have been reaching to shift the downtube shifters, hard to tell from that video.

Interesting bar in theory, but it would mostly add weight on climbs.