Singlespeed & Fixed Gear - short short bars

just now on broadway i saw a guy on an orange track frame with SHORT straight bars. i mean really short. they couldn't have been wider than 8" (his hands were right at the ends.) he seemed to be okay while going straight but my question is what's it like when you have to make an emergency turn.

there's a guy in ATL with really short bars and ergonomic plastic bar ends -- sort of look like an airplane wing cross-section.

twitchy as hell, yea?

from what i know, short-short bars make bike polo easier.

I was running a pair of flat bars cut down to 10" recently for a few weeks. Just wide enough to get an Oury grip on either end.

They definitely look cool, and are surprisingly easy to get around with. I never felt that I would lose control of the bars, and made plenty of 'emergency turns' weaving in and out of Chicago traffic. If anything, the steering feels a litte more 'quick'.

They're nice n' narrow, so I had far more confidence going into tight squeezes than with track drops. Trackstands were almost as easy as with the drops, and I was able to skip and skid with them as well (I ran a front brake with 'em, though).

But... I took them off. During longer rides my wrists would start to hurt, and I figured it would be pretty stupid to get Carpal Tunnel from a pair of novelty bars. I'll keep 'em around for a bit of fun now and then, but I can't see them being a long-term solution.

Maybe they were polo bars: http://www.boxwoodbicyclepolo.com/polo6.jpg

You know what they say about the size of a mans bar....

my mtb ss has short bars (hacksawed) with bar ends. i love the steering on it. and it's fun as all getout.

it is twitchy, but i never feel like i'm gonna lose control. emergency turns and everything. played dodge the tourists on the opening day of "The Gates" up in CP.

of course, i want to go from ss to fix, but it'd mean getting new wheels. maybe this spring.

Argh. The bars are NARROW, not short.

Any other nits that need pickin'?

the thread title was a joke, as in short shorts, but in any case NARROW would imply that the bar is thin. taken off the stem, the bar is short or long. but yeah, thanks anyway. :rolleyes:

plonk

Argh. The bars are NARROW, not short.

Call it what you want short stuff...it's still not going to impress the ladies.
Enjoy

my friend josh in brooklyn (who not long ago moved there from atlanta) rode his bike (a french track bike, can't remember what kind) with some shorties/narrows whatever the hell you want to call them. they were probably 7 or 8 inches across. he delivered food with them, hung bags to them and rode. i thought he was crazy, but he said he liked 'em. i think he has since taken them off.

http://www.bikeforums.net/showthread.php?t=71942&highlight=polo+bars

Check the bars in post #6 of this thread.

handlebars too short
will not impress the ladies
short things never do

Enjoy

http://www.bikeforums.net/showthread.php?t=71942&highlight=polo+bars

Check the bars in post #6 of this thread.


ah yes, those are the ones.

My Roomate tells me of Really Short/Narrow Track
Bars where it basically starts the curve as soon
as it comes out of the stem
Has anyone seen such a set of bars and if so would
you know where i might be able to purchase them?
Thanks

handlebars too short
will not impress the ladies
short things never do

Enjoy

Is this an appropriate place for a "thickness-not-length" comment?

thickness or shortness
there's always room for haikus
stick to the subject

Enjoy

Call it what you want short stuff...it's still not going to impress the ladies.
Enjoy

My understanding is that girth is more important...

Beaten down by a haiku...

curses.

were they bigger than a babies arm?


Anyway, I rode my friends bike that was set up with really short bars, I can see how you would develope all new muscles that way. It was fun, but difficult to skid with those and I felt a little shakey. I like my bullhorns and will stick with those.... unless we can get a bike polo team going in philly? Who's in?

http://nycvelo.com/bike.jpg

anybody?

im in for bike polo....and this bars are ridonculous

Surely thou dost Jest! How can one steer with those?Those bars look like the drop section of a pair road bars , I see no center bulge.

thread is getting strange
posts about length, girth, and bulge
It's the grip that's key

Enjoy

we are talking about handlebars here. Not someones Big deck like on blue collar tv.

I say go all the way. Just make the stem come straight up, with a grip, kinda like a helicopter. One hand only. Then you could play bike polo AND bike jousting.

http://nycvelo.com/bike.jpg

anybody?

is that a drop?

Yep. Sawed off, and turned on its side!

Yep. Sawed off, and turned on its side!

I wonder if/how they shimmed it... a standard bar diameter is 24mm, so it'd have to be shimmed up to at least 25.4mm. Though, I suppose with the tight curve you'd have three points of contact inside the stem clamp: two on the outside edges and one right in middle at the apex of the curve. Maybe the curve's enough to just hamfist that bolt until the whole rig holds... but three points of contact and the possibility of the clamp edge digging into the bar seems like a recipe for disaster.

That setup loks ultra-badass, but I thought about that shady clamping too.

Just thought of this...

Yojimbo's has some funky-lookin' bars that could be modified for some super-narrow drop-style bars... like, 30cm wide or so. They're hard to describe... imagine a pair of drop bars, but at the ends they take a 90 degree turn and flare outwards another 6 inches. If you cut the flares off, they'd be pretty sweet.

Marcus - what kind of bars are these? They're on that little table underneath the wheels (right under your bronze CXP-21 wheel, if I remember), they're steel, and they cost $14.50. I thought they were Nitto's, but maybe not...

If you look at the photo there's some pretty obvious gapping between the back of the "bar" and the clamp. Then again it's also short a front wheel, probably for safety's sake. ;)

If you're going to go that far you might as well not even put handlebars in. You can just grab on to the stem and steer it that way.

Or maybe you could just thread some rope through and use it like reigns and get some real horse ridin' polo action.

Oh damn, that actually sounds like a fantastic idea! I really wish I had a pop top stem so I could easily swap bars.

Pull the bars, rotate the stem 180 degrees (trail will keep your steering sort of stable), get some rope. Yeah!

If you look at the photo there's some pretty obvious gapping between the back of the "bar" and the clamp. Then again it's also short a front wheel, probably for safety's sake. ;)

Front wheel is locked with the frame, because everyone knows that bike theives LOVE bikes with only a drop for a handlebar...

i love that theres a back brake... safety first!

Might be an SS