Mountain Biking - Contemplating short bars.

I am thinking about getting a pair of flats and cutting them pretty short to run on my MTB (1.5 ' maybe?), and then some stubby bar ends. Has anyone done this and had problems/ success? I am used to the much narrower road bars than my wide ass MTB bars and I just feel awkward now gripping the bar ends with my hands 2 feet apart, plus the idea of making my bike more narrow is appealing to me. The only problems I can forsee are leverage issues but i dont know if this is even a problem

18'' bars are old school.

how wide are your bars now? You say your hands are 2' apart so does that mean your bars are 28''? or do you mean your bars are 24''

24'' is already pretty narrow for bars.

I would try trimming an inch off each side at a time and see how you feel.

IIRC the riser bars that came on my bike were 29" or so. I was having real problems navigating New Hampshire's windy, tight single track, constantly bouncing off of trees or getting hung up. I switched to the narrowest flat bar I could find in my price range which IIRC was still 24"-26" or so. They're perfect. I haven't had any problems catching trees or getting hung up and haven't noticed a down side.

31" beats all.

I remember narrow bars! The narrowest I ever went was about 20", although I do recall one guy with 16" gold Hyperlites, Dia-Comp SS-5, XT thumbies... Awwwwww yeah...

The only real problem I had was climbing out of the saddle. This was solved by barends. There are some trails that I used to ride that are difficult on anything wider than 24". I had to briefly wheelie and turn my bars 45 degrees to allow the handle bars past the trees.

Yeah, Just trimming your bar down would be a good idea and see how you like it. I had issues with the flat bar because they were too narrow and I did not have the stability. Then again MY balance is not too hot, so now I have a 29" Sunline. Which is quite large, but looks crucial.

I dont think balance will be an issue. I am investigating this because Ive been riding a lot of messenger- type routes on my road bike which has really narrow nitto olympiad drops with probably about 16-18in. I feel really comfortable riding on the hoods of these, and dont really need the extra bar space. Not to hijack my own thread, but would road bullhorns (with thumbies and bullhorn brakes) be too flimsy for a MTB? What would the comparative difference be between this and some short bar ends?

. . . I had to briefly wheelie and turn my bars 45 degrees to allow the handle bars past the trees.This gets especially tricky at 25-30 mph.

fo me, 24" bas are just a bit too narrow for many applications. It's what I'm unning now, but I'm going to get something a couple or three inches wider.

BTW, flats vesus ises doesn't really matter. Width and sweep matter. That said, rises are a bit more adjustable as tilting them back and forth can fine tune fit.

So if you like your current bar height but not width, why not just chop your current bars? Or do you want to lower the bars as well?

I still ride flat bars cut down to about 22". Anything wider feels like driving a bus. The narrow wooded paths around here are really difficult to ride with anything wider than 24".

This may seem way too obvious but, if you choose to cut dowm your bars, do it in small steps. You can always remove more, but you can't add it back.

current bars are risers which i dont like aesthetically, plus they block me from moving my brakes, shifters in more

current bars are risers which i dont like aesthetically, plus they block me from moving my brakes, shifters in more

That's what I found with my risers. I could gain maybe 1/2 an inch, but needed to lose more than that to make the tree gaps manageable.

I am thinking about getting a pair of flats and cutting them pretty short to run on my MTB (1.5 ' maybe?), and then some stubby bar ends.

Are you German or what?

Someone at some point in my family was swiss-german but im not. why?