Old 02-15-09, 04:28 PM
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mikearena
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Originally Posted by mollusk
First thought was "Holy crap, does this make the bike twitchy. I'll never be able to ride in these things." After a while getting used to them and practicing transitioning from the "normal" bar positions to the aerobar position it wasn't so bad. My second thought was "Holy crap, you can go one hell of a whole lot faster with these things."

A couple of questions for those in the know. First, are dedicated TT bikes just as twitchy as road bikes with clip-on aerobars? I don't plan on buying a dedicated TT bike soon (although the shop that sponsors my racing team sells Felt and I might be able to score a killer deal on one), but damn the bike handling of a road bike with clip-on aerobars it is a major distraction.

The second question is how can I get my position lower? I have no spacers on my bike that I'm using as a TT bike (2002 Lemond Zurich - these have a pretty short headtube BTW) and I have my stem flipped down and I even rotated the aerobars down about 10 degrees from that and I still feel like I could get lower/more aero. I even started out with the aerobars inserted to their minimum amounts. I'm looking for a CHEAP solution here, not a $10K bike purchase solution.
1. Told ya so.

2. It's my understanding that the slacker head tube of most time trial bikes will help smooth out the handling a little bit, but it'll never be quite as smooth as you're probably used to. I used to ride around on the track bike with aerobars (75* headtube) and that made for some close calls at times.

3. Some aerobars let you attach the extensions underneath the bars. I'm using the Profile t2+ bars, and it required some rearrangement of the attachment hardware, but I've got them set up so they attach under the bars and get me about another inch or so lower. You could also just buy a really tiny bike for dirt cheap and set that up for time trials if you wanted a separate bike solution. But really, you should just pick up a Felt DA because I want to see one in person.
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