Clem von Jones

As an experiment I set up this too-small vintage mountain bike frame with drops and kept lowering them to see how far down I could go and still feel comfortable. To my shock and amazement I discovered the lower I got the better it felt, but I had to keep putting shorter stems on ending finally with this -17, 80mm one. The bar drop here is 18cm. I used to get some occasional hand numbness when the bars were high but it went away and completely disappeared as I got lower. This position is good for about three hours after which I start wondering if the bars could be a bit higher.

Anyway, just thought I would share because it seems a bit unorthodox and wondered if anyone else has gone thru a similar process of discovery. This experiment has revolutionized my beliefs about bike fit and led me toward the conclusion that modern-day mountain bikes have far too-long top tubes to make effective drop bar conversions. I would have to use a smallest sized mountain frame to do it and the resulting seat tube length would be around 400cm or less, generally far too low to find a seatpost capable of sufficient rise. It would also look really ugly even if I could make it work. I really loathe modern mountain bike geometry now. Even modern road race bikes have too-high head tubes, and too-long long top tubes in my opinion. Is all modern bike geometry an erroneous, defective fad?

I'm about 186cm tall, this bike's ETT is about 570mm (still almost too long in my opinion) and it has a headtube of 130mm excluding the vintage threaded headset. Obviously the slack 71.5-ish degree geometry of this frame is an obstacle, but it's still possible to get an aggressive and comfortable set-up. And yes I ride in the drops a lot.

HTupolev

I wonder if you haven't optimized into a false conclusion due to a combination of available stems and the frame geometry. That is, I suspect that you've tried options more or less along the green line...



...when the amount of extension that your body likes requires bar positions falling along something like the red line. So the posture has gotten "better" by going "lower", but could have also gotten "better" by stretching out. That is, I'd be surprised if you couldn't have made a larger frame work for you as well.
A lot of people in the C&V MTB Drop-Bar conversions thread use very short and high stems. But those builds are also going for a far less aggressive fit, with the saddle lower and farther back on the rails; this scoots the rider's butt/torso/arms/everything farther from the bike's front end, so those high short-reach stems aren't holding the bars too close.
It's pretty easy to end up with a relatively short-and-low fit when starting from a small MTB frame. My MTB drop-bar conversion is in a similar boat, albeit much less extreme.

Where are things hurting after 3 hours?

Carbonfiberboy 

I know many riders who've become more comfortable with more drop and reach. It's not unusual, though your amount of drop is a bit more than most.

Brian25

I am in the same club. Do not get me wrong, I did not use to do correct back/ hip exercises and like with most people with age my back/ hips were weak and I had to be more upright. Like you, I am amazed about how much mere power that I can deliver to the pedals with the lower position. One takeaway that you did not mention is that with a small frame that you are riding, is how easy it is to get on/ off of it. I am sure that you can easily put your foot over the top tube when getting on/ off. I see so many people on bikes that are so ridiculously big/ upright it's silly. Whatever happened to the basic rule of thumb of having more seatpost showing than headtube size. Yea new bike geometry has really kind of jumped the shark especially with the tupper long top tubes on the 29er rage. I ride bikes with 52 - 54 cm top tubes. When I look at 9ers then your talkin' about a 60 cm top tube on my size frame, and unless I start riding with a stem mounted backwards, that length of top tube will never work for me.

79pmooney

+1 I go a step simpler. Yes, your arc is correct but in the rather small range I actually want my bars, a simple line 30 degrees from horizontal works just fine. (This line, conveniently, is almost exactly a line of "slope" 2 cm of horizontal stem over 1 cm of stem spacers/extension.) Now, I have gone more toward the somewhat higher and considerably further forward locations. Between that and ridiculously long arms, it means I like really long stems. (My 5 longest are (2) 180s, 175, 155 and 140)

My bikes have around 5" drop but when I butt my elbow against the nose of the seat, my fingertips come 4-5" short of the bar tops. Medium to deep, longish reach bars with long brake hoods set horizontal.

So, for me, the magic spot is one point on that line. Once I know that, I can come up with the required stem length for any height I want. (Low and close is racy and fast but I hit my knees on the bars when I come out of the saddle to climb. Higher and long is actually more aero since my arms aren't as vertical and is actually more comfortable for long climbs as long as the road is "sticky" enough that I don't spin the lightly loaded rear tire. For bikes that are cruisers, the line just gets moved up and the seat pushed back a little.

Ben

pakossa

I'm sure I've "experimented" with my fit more than 99% of cyclists out there. I have my bar 4cm lower than the saddle, because if I lower it just 5-10mm more, my power output drops upwards of 25%. (And I've adjusted my fit 1,000+ times -- NOT a typo -- so I know it's not due to the saddle position being wrong.) I've done a mountainous century with the bar 10+cm lower than the saddle without any discomfort, but, again, was losing so much power, my ave. speed was a couple MPH slower than it would've been with the higher bar.

woodcraft

Power drops off if I go too low,

& probably less aero than my normal 2 1/2" saddle-bar drop w/ bent elbows.

I ride w/ one guy with extremely low bars. He's strong as hell, but I see no advantage in sticking his arms down into the wind.

Clem von Jones

It's more comfortable lower. I too used to notice a power dropoff when lower but it went away after using shorter stems. The lower you go the shorter the reach needs to be. On a different mountain bike I tried the other experiment by going long reach and met with nothing but trouble. It causes numb hands, shoulder and neck pain, and the front end wanders on steep climbs. My thoughts are that very few people are able to go low and short enough because bike designs with too-high head tubes and too-long top tubes hinder them. These long and high designs are attempts to make create idiot-proof mountain bikes (road bike designs are a lot better). Like the "lawyer lips" on front forks to prevent the wheel from coming off when people are too distracted to tighten the clamp adequately these weight-on-the-back-wheel designs are supposed to prevent riders from breaking their necks when they recklessly bomb down hills or attempt foolish stunts they've seen on youtube. It's true the bike becomes safer off-road at high speeds but the cost of that is a bike that nobody wants to ride, is uncomfortable and unable to climb well.

In my original post I mentioned the frame as being "too small" but actually that's a 20" frame, a 52cm seat tube. It seems like a tiny frame but that's only by comparison to modern frames which are absurdly proportioned. Mountain bike design has gone wrong. They aren't even real bicycles anymore, they're just a downhill rides that require ski lifts to go up. I've wanted to recreate a modern lightweight version of this large-bar-drop mtb but have been unable to find any frame and fork combination to make it possible. There are no bikes like this now. I could build a similar cx bike but the tires would be skinny, high pressure, and weight just as much or more than these 2.1" tubeless Schwalbes.

Anyway, the point of this thread was simply to make a counter-claim to the general belief that higher bars are more comfortable. The idea is testable, so it's worth trying (except on bikes - of which there are increasing numbers - where the designer excluded that option).

AnthonyG

The bars are too low when your knees rise into your chest.

You probably have proportionally longer arms than most and I suspect you have your arms straight rather than bending your elbows.

SO its not really about where the handlebars are per se. Its about where you back and legs are. Someone with slightly shorter arms who bends their elbows could be comfortable being just as low as you are while the handlebars are significantly higher.

fietsbob

Nope, as I get older I change the set up higher, drop bars, touring, more like no difference or close to it..



Alternate; with Trekking bars, are higher than the saddle.


YMMV.. etc..






....

Trakhak

If you want to tweak your position further, the round crossbars from a Yakima car top bike rack fit perfectly in a 27.2 seat tube.