*{Drewitors Note: I know plenty of fellas who’ve been teased about their high-rise “old man bars.” I have not heard of anyone having the stones to look an OBB shredder in the face and call them “old lady bars.“}
More Mercedes Method
I’ve typed reams about the most basic of bar setup systems, close your eyes and cut your bars, the Mercedes Gonzalez* method. Now, I’m not claiming she invented the idea, but I personally gleaned it from a magazine interview she did decades ago, and it’s served me well since then.
Perhaps more importantly, I’ve learned definitively that every bike I ride has a different ideal bar width for me. I just close my eyes and find it. And when I look back on a wide range of effective top tube and reach measurements, it’s not weird that I prefer a 750mm-wide bar on some mountain bikes and an 800mm-wide bar on others. Usually, I find myself somewhere in between.
On that same range of bikes, I’ve run between a 32mm and a 70mm stem and a variety of bar sweeps as well. Interestingly, the longest stem and the widest, straightest bar were in combination. Plus, most of my 800mm hours in the last decade were on XC bikes with steep headtube angles (HTAs) and short actual top tubes. That is to say, there’s not necessarily an application correlation with bar width.
*{Mercedes Gonzalez is a former pro MX racer who switched to podiuming on DH bikes in the ’90s.}
Blind Rolling
Setting bar roll is the same story as giving them ye olde chop. I tighten my stem just enough that the bar is static and then, with my eyes buttoned, I rotate it to where it feels right. At that point, trimmed and rolled, it’s time to hit the trails. On a double-hardtail {rigid} or a sag wagon {full suspension} bike, I rarely micro-adjust from there. But, on a stapler {hardtail}, or super-stapler {long-travel-hardtail/LTH}, some extra level of on-trail-tuning is always required.
As a matter of record, there’s an exponential scale in play. The more travel my hardtail has, and the greater the amount of rise the bar has, the greater the multiplier of fiddle-faffing generally takes place until I find my happy home.
Here, there’s a simple explanation. The greater the handlebar’s rise, the larger the difference a degree of roll will make when hands hit grips. The more fork travel a hardtail has, the greater the range of geometry change and ground-to-bar height through that change.
In my range of experiences, no bar-bike combo has proven as difficult to sweet spot as combining the 170mm fork on my Arcturian Voyager with the -15° sweep, 75mm rise, Hunter Smooth Move bar. I have relatively simple success dialing in the Nitto-made aluminum beauty on my fully rigid rig, and, of course, my wrists, elbows, and shoulders prefer the alt-bar sweep over other grip-elevators I’ve tried.
Still, I keep pursuing this setup as, especially at night, the high bar is proving to be confidence-inspiring in jankier terrain. And, the more I ride it the less-awful I’m becoming at flat corners and technical switchbacks where a lower setup would be my preference.
Sightless @ Double Sag
On a hardtail, I set all my adjustables at sag. Saddle position, saddle angle, stem height, brake lever angle, and bar roll. That way, pedaling in the saddle, everything fits comfortably. With it being a hardtail and single speed, I’m usually standing as soon as the terrain becomes technical or steep anyway.
With the SR Durolux that I’m running, I’ve been playing with 20-25% sag, which winds up being some 34-42mm lower that my bar is now sitting. At the same time, my effective reach grows, and the bar feels different. To achieve this effect, static, I use a strap to suck my fork down the desired amount.
With a lower-rise bar, blind-rolling with sag generally delivers a happy hand position. With the higher-rise bar, it’s no problem to achieve a happy roll for climbing, but particularly on steep, janky descents, it’s an endless amount of micro-adjusting until I find the right, for me, compromise.
Enter my double-sag setup. I suck my super-stapler’s fork down to 50% sag, and set the bar roll with 85mm of travel eaten. That’s more than the first few suspension forks I owned had in total. I close my eyes, roll the bar, and discover my happy place. Well, at least for one ride. Never stop playing with bicycle fit.
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