Two Wheel Blogs

Many manufacturers of MTB bars on the market will tell you some things in the advertising/website. Often reported are numbers like width (length), rise (length), sweep (angle), and up-sweep (angle).

Without getting into my disdain for up sweep (excessively), I want to discuss the un-reported data a bit.

Let's say you want to try a new handlebar on your bike. You are a performance enthusiast, and you want to try something different, but you don't want to change more than one variable if possible. As a performance guy, you want to change only one thing and see what it does for you...let's say you simply want to change the angle of your wrist by changing the "sweep" of your bars without changing the reach.

Suffice to say, this is not a "simple" geometry problem considering that you do not know where the sweep angles occur in the bar. Think about it, does the up sweep and back sweep occur at the same bend? If it did, it would be only one bend, and therefore giving two separate angles would be un-necessary. May be this is starting to sound like a rant...

Furthermore, can we calculate anything from any of these numbers? Before we get wrapped around the bar with risers, lets simplify with a flat bar that has only backward sweep....as long as you install it that way.

Lets take a very simple example. A 600 mm flat bar that has a simple 10 degree sweep. How many mm behind the stem clamp might I expect my hands to be when I grasp the bar near it's ends? Once again, this question can not be answered with the information typically given by the manufacturer.

Think about this...a guy that has a simple flat bar with 3 degrees sweep wants to try a simple flat bar with 10 degrees of sweep, but also wants to fit on his bike...so the stem length should change too...but how much? Is this a conspiracy?

Let me go back a bit for those I may have lost along the way...A Jones Bar has 45 whopping degrees of sweep, but the sweep angle apex is VERY close to the hands (and far from the stem clamp). This results in the hands not really being very far behind the stem clamp.....Now contrast this with the Salsa MotoAce flat bar with only 11 degrees of sweep. On the Salsa the sweep angle apex is much closer to the stem clamp, but the sweep is roughly a quarter of the Jones Bar...so which bar needs the longer stem? Probably the Salsa!

Now if I have not confused you enough, lets toss in another angle...Up sweep (we are finally going back to those riser bars I talked about earlier). No manufacturer I have researched reports where the apex of this angle is relative to the stem clamp...or the apex of the back sweep for that matter. Many people who (like me) do not like up sweep, have found that by rotating the bars back in the stem clamp, they can reduce and usually eliminate the up sweep by rotating it into back sweep. Anyone want to try and guess what the resulting back sweep is without knowing the relation of the angles?

Man, I would love to believe that someone is actually reading this! I would really love to believe that someday this data will be available on manufacturers websites!

You should care too! If you have not already made the change to over sized stems and bars, you will in the not-too-distant future. The 25.4 mm stem clamp size will not be around forever! Many bars are only available in OS (a.k.a. 31.8 mm stem clamp size). Some of us want to make the switch to OS without buying a lot of stems that won't be used after the first week!

In retrospect, this does look a lot like a rant...see, I am building this new bike, and I want to make sure things are peachy (or at least close) for my first ride. I have learned a few things regarding bars along the way, so I thought I would share.

One other thing I want to share...Jason at Salsa Cycles is the man! He not only answered my questions, we talked for about 30 minutes about this and that. He is a great guy with a great job at a great company!