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| Flared drop bars are not well understood. (Easton EA 70 AX bar pictured) |
The other day I saw a few posts on social media from a few riders deriding the trend in gravel bikes using flared drop bars. The overall feeling was that they were completely foolish, unnecessary, and "who really stays in the drops in the rough stuff anyway?"
I restrained myself from trying to teach on the benefits of the flared drop bar, because really, in light of such ignorant and uninformed criticism, it was obvious I'd have been wasting my time there. But it does point out the fact that the mass adoption of the flared drop bar has been completely without any education, marketing of the benefits, nor with any historical context. If this type of bar had been detailed by brands in such a manner, then riders could make informed comments and choices. Unfortunately, the deafening silence on this type of bar, (and other facets of cycling in general), from brands that sell this stuff leads to the sort of worthless banter on components and bikes all over the internet. (Tires are the worst, for instance)
Standard race bred drop bars are perfectly fine, for what they were meant for, but gravel riding is a different animal, and therein lies the reasons for being when it comes to flared drop bars. Then there is the propensity for many drop bar bike owners to never use the drops in the first place. This also leads to a misinformed opinion on drop bars, because if the drops are something you'd rarely use anyway, well then, yeah.... Flared drops are pointless. But on the flip side, you should be using the drops a LOT, or why bother? Just cut them off, or use "bull horn" bars. It'd be lighter and those pesky drops wouldn't be in the way, using up bar tape when you could be double wrapping those bits by the levers. Or....maybe just use flat bars.
Uneducated, misinformed opinions and takes on components abound on the internet. Flared drop bars are just one thing in the pile of parts that are not well explained, nor marketed correctly by the brands that spec them on their bicycles. I could write an entire series on this sort of thing, but the recent flared drop bar commentary I saw prompted me to post this time. I wish companies would see that they are doing a really poor job in this area.
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| The Cowchipper (shown here) and the Cowbell are now available in silver ano from Salsa Cycles. |
I look at my Orange Crush BMC Monster Cross rig once in awhile and wish I had silver handle bars, but.....yeah. Silver flared drop bars aren't very common, and the ones that you can get in silver are not up my alley. It used to be that you could get the original Gary Bars in silver, and I may actually have a set somewhere, but no..... Cowbells or Cowchippers just blow those things away, at least for me.
So it was that I was rather excited to see that Salsa Cycles has now offered silver anodized Cowbell and Cowchipper bars in the "Deluxe" level. (7000 series aluminum, lighter weight) It looks like my dream of putting on silver flared drop bars on the BMC just might come true soon.
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| The Evil Bike Company's "Chamois Hagar" gravel bike. |
The other day I saw a Tweet about Evil Bike Company. You know.....the radical mountain bike, trail shredding brand? Well, they now have a "gravel bike". Yep! But check it out, because it is not a "me-too" bike at all.
Now y'all may wonder what I mean by "me-too" bikes. That was a term coined in the 00's for companies that were throwing together something with fat 700c wheels and calling it a 29"er, when in fact it was just a Taiwanese, or Chinese sourced "catalog" bike and was about as generic as they came. At one point I think there were a half a dozen brands using the same, or nearly the same, carbon hard tail from the same factory, but claiming differences. This also happened when gravel bikes took off four years ago and companies were slapping the gravel tag on cyclo cross bikes with terrible geometry for gravel roads.
I'm sure Evil Bikes sees the gravel scene as "the latest shiny object" like many bike companies do, and if you cannot afford, or want to deal with electrifying bicycles with motors, then gravel is your game. Evil Bikes took a very "clean sheet" on the design table and went nuts. Just what do we have here anyway? A new game in town- that's what.
Back when I was looking at what I thought would make for a really great gravel bike, I was advocating for a deeper bottom bracket height, slacker head tube angles, and longer fork offsets. In my mind, a 70° head tube angle and a 80mm bottom bracket drop was "pretty extreme". Ben Witt and I actually were toying around with having Mike Pofahl, a frame builder in Northfield, Minnesota, weld up a couple of these bikes. We were thinking fatter 700c rubber too. Maybe not 29"er sized, but bigger than 40mm for sure. At the time, (2010-2011), there just wasn't much of anything other than Bruce Gordon's Rock & Road tires, which were nominally 43-44mm wide, depending upon the rim you used. So, that was the tire Ben designed around. Unfortunately, we never got around to pulling the trigger.
But the "Chamois Hagar", (dumb name, but whatever), blasts past most of what we were thinking back then and sets a new bar. With a 66.8° head tube angle mated to a custom fork with 428mm axle to crown height and 57mm of offset, you could be excused for thinking this was a gravel bike designed by a trail shredder, because, well......it was! They used the 80mm bottom bracket drop too. And, with room for 50mm tires in 700c and 650B, the bike would be a pretty interesting rig in Iowa on a day where you had fast hills and fresh, chunky gravel.
What I don't know that I'd care for is the really low top tube. I know.....dropper post, but this makes the Chamois Hagar a bit less capable in terms of carrying along a top tube bag like a Revelate Tangle bag. But there is a lot to like, and more to be very curious about here.
That's it for this week! It's going to be nice this weekend around here and I hope to get some riding in. I hope that you do as well!
12 comments:
That Evil Gravel bike just speaks to me for some reason!
I have used a set of flared drop bars on my old Mukluk when I was making it more gravel oriented. They were the Soma Junebug bars and they were really comfortable for riding in the drops. For a bike like the Mukluk, they were a really pretty good setup.
Trying to go fast on gravel, on the other hand, makes me question flared drop bars. In that scenario, you mainly use the drops for descending rough terrain, or getting low and hauling butt! Wouldnt a flared drop bar make you less aerodynamic in the drops compared to a more standard drop?
That would make for a neat Win Tunnel test for the Specialized folks.
Hi Mark,
I'm not sure about the bar thing - I'd put myself closer to the ignorant camp than otherwise, but do I understand it that to ride in the drops for extended periods you need the whole bar to be higher, or a shallower drop? My Topstone kills me to me in the drops for long, but is comfy on the hoods.
Maybe the whole use of drop bars also depends on your use case - if you are mainly gravel/road-oriented rather than trail, then setting a bike up closer to a traditional road set-up makes sense? So you can ride on the hoods more comfortably. Whereas if you are on the trails more, a set-up that lets you get down into the drops will give you a more comfortable ride from the compliance in the bar and control from the extra width?
Or maybe what you are saying is a shallow drop bar with a bit of flare gives you the best of both worlds in most conditions? Is that what you are driving at?
You'll appreciate the confusion as an MTB rider who over the years has been told that flat handlebars around 560mm let you 'nip through the trees quicker', to riser bars and something about 680mm allowing more comfort and control, to todays' current norm of flatish bars around 760mm (with even 800mm being suggested as acceptable!).
That's just with flat bars too! This bendy stuff is a whole other kettle of fish...
Happy Holidays BTW!
I dunno, I think Chamois Hagar isn't such a bad name. Always been a bit more of a David Lee Roth fan myself, but hey, to each his or her own...
Way back in the day of Alpinestars' neon paint splashes and Tioga disc wheels, a few of us, me included, wanted to emulate Tomac and started to run drop bars on our mountain bikes. I used an original set of flared Specialized Dirt Drop bars on my Rocky Mountain. Besides looking cool and freakishly different, the benefit, to us, of riding in the drops was that over the technical sections, you hands couldn't "fall off" of the bars like they could if you rode on the hoods. My flared bars offered a wider stance than the guys that were just running regular road bars, but whatever, even mountain bars were being run narrow back then. When we received our shipment of the new Specialized Hover Flare handlebars last year, it didn't take me long to install them on my own bike. The flare isn't nearly as pronounced as other bars on the market, but I like them and the "riser" portion is nice too, although the center portion wasn't originally invented as a rise, but is apparently a drop middle to improve aero profiling of the dirty air area under the stem.
@Tyller Loewens- Aero? Does that matter when the gravel is so chunky and deep at 30+ mph or when you are navigating a muddy road and control is difficult? I value control over aero on gravel, and unless you ride smooth dirt roads or if your gravel is pretty tame, I choose a flared drop every time. Aero? That's what aero bars are for, right? ;>)
@MuddyMatt- One of the unsaid things here is that you first have to be able to use a drop bar to its greatest advantage. This may be prohibited by the bike set up or your degree of flexibility, or both.
I'll repeat what I said in the post- If you cannot use all the positions of the drop bar comfortably, why run a drop bar? Or, looking at it another way- "What do I need to do to make it so I can take full advantage of all the positions of a drop bar?" If the answer to that is prohibitive/impossible due to various reasons, then a drop bar- flared or no- is not for you.
The point of my post is that we in the bicycle industry do not communicate "why" a drop bar, flared or standard, is a good thing. If we did, the uninformed/misinformed folks wouldn't have to rely on hearsay and speculation for the reasons for this component,(and others).
@Michael Lemberger- I'm with you on the DLR era of Van Halen, but Sammy had a good run solo, and with Van Hagar, he wasn't "bad". (Saw DLR solo and Van Hagar the same year back in the 80's)
@jdc- When you commented about how your hands don't get pushed off the bars if you are on the drops, you hit upon one of what I would say are three big advantages of drop bars on rougher terrain. The other tow being ergonomics, (aligns wrists, forearms, shoulders better) and a closely related, but different advantage for hand positions.
Here’s my beef with most flared bars:
I feel like I’m always sacrificing the tops position for the drops. While the drops feels great for powering through the rough stuff or even single track, the canted in levers always feel like a compromise and end up hurting the wrists over the long haul.
The short reach trend isn’t helping things either as there’s no hand position just back of the lever body.
(I’ve been running a Whisky 24f as well as a cow chipper in the past)
What I really want is a wide, mid- flare, long reach bar with near vertical levers. Currently happiest with a Nitto Noodle for gravel but would welcome some flare.
@AA- Sounds like your set up was off. Have you tried Cowbells? Might be a good compromise for you.
I’ve tinkered around with my set up enough to find the limits of it. ( ex-bike fitter and wrenched in some pretty good shops for a decade or so).
The cowbells are close but the 68 reach is too short. A good example of what’s not working for me with most gravel bars.
I want something in the 85mm plus range to have a hand perch behind the levers.
@AA- Fair enough- But if you knew you had to have a hand position behind the levers on the ramps, why did you even bother with a Cowchipper? Seems like a self-defeating effort to start with.
Good luck on the bar search.
I have found many people uncomfortable with flared drops are running the wrong stem. Both in length and height.
Really wanted the wider flare for the rough stuff. Too many bruised wrists.
Sometimes you don’t know what you’ll miss until it’s gone.
If you got any thoughts on a wide, long reach flared bar I’m all ears.
If you can’t reach your brake levers..you might be too aerroo.
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