Originally Posted by
neilfein
Trekker, thanks for posting this; I was thinking about putting moustache bars on my touring bike, but that would require new shifters and brake levers. Midge bars seem like a good middle ground between the two. What size tires are you rinning? 700x32s, or something smaller? I find that 32s handle pretty well on packed dirt and gravel, even when fully loaded.
Roadfix, did you find that midge bars were more comfortable than drops in the hoods? What about them did you dislike?
I'm also wondering if tilting the drops a bit might help, angling them so the front is pointing up a bit.
I think Midge bars were designed primarily to be ridden in the drops. I tried angling them every which way including varying the positions of the levers. They all seem to work to a degree but compromise bar top/hood positions.
Also, I like to bring my bike into my work and sometimes into stores and found the bars to be too wide to maneuver around people and objects. The bar end shifters tend to get banged around a lot too with this setup.
I ran Nitto moustache bars for a while on my commuter with aero levers and bar-end shifters. Believe it or not you can also run a STI set on these bars. I once ran Campy Ergo shifter/levers on my moustache road bike.