roobydoo

Ok, I'm in a bit of a bind, It seems that vintage 1"/25.4mm bars are sparse, unless you pillage the scrap yard regularly.

My Sora series brifters don't sit right;
Too far forward and it feels I'm reaching,
too far back and I cant reach from the drops,
tilt the bars back to sit right up top, and the drops feel like I'm falling out.
Tilt forward, and it feels like I'm going to push the grips off the bars, nowhere to sit my palms.

Here's the bike in question: (last tested position)


Here's my current cross bike, measured and set up for me


Can I bend 15yr old aluminum bars? or would the metal just stress and break?

Any suggestions?, preferably economical as this is mostly a project bike, likely to be used as a commuter that can be ridden around town, with less fear of locking it up.

curbtender

Looks like if you moved them up almost to the tape you have there and then rotate the bars down to almost level it might work.

FastJake

First, you cannot bend those aluminum bars to look like the bars in the second picture. If they don't break they'll be severely weakened.

I really like the "flat top" bars like you have on your cross bike, I wish they were all like that. But unfortunately almost all old drop bars are like the ones you're having the trouble with. My solution is to set them at a compromise so that the bottoms are still angled down a bit (not nearly as severe as they look in your picture) and the tops are also angled down rather than being flat. It's less than optimal but it's about the best you can do with those bars. After that set your brifters the best you can. They look like they are in a good position in the picture but will obviously need to be moved once you rotate the bars.

onespeedbiker

There are still a number of 1" drop bars out there made by Nitto, Salsa and Origin8. Just Google 25.4 drop bars and see which one comes the closest to what you want. You also might want to look for a shorter 90deg stem.

roobydoo

Okay, so a little forward on the bars, a little back on the brifters....
Looking at my photo's again I also noticed the cross brifters are angled a little further back than I realized, may have been part of the issues I was having.

fietsbob

One rule of thumb, from the days those old bars were new, with a straight edge
held along the bottom of the drop, it will touch the bottom tip of the brake lever.

that is where you would position your brake lever ..

from the front.. is there sag in them? . may be fatigued ,
this would be a time to replace them.

the shape of brake levers have changed much since then ,
and the bars as well to match..
treaded to threadless quill stem adapter + threadless stem ..
will let you use a lot more handlebar types.

well biked

You might have better luck with a stem/handlebar with a 26.0 mm clamp size instead of 25.4mm clamp size. I've retrofitted quite a few old school handlebars with modern aero brake hoods, and it is indeed a challenge with most of them to get a nice, ergonomic setup for riding with your hands on both the brake hoods and in the drop position. By the time "brifters" came into existence, most road bars had the 26.0 clamp size and so there's more out there in that clamp size that will allow a pretty good, ergonomic setup. Still, the modern compact bars in your lower photo are fast becoming the most common shape for bars on new road bikes. And for good reason; the ergonomics are ideal for most folks.

The best bars I've found to be used with a quill stem and "brifters" are these Deda's I found on ebay. They're deep, but the bend is such that you get a nice transition from the top of the bar to the brake hood, and still keep a nice angle for the lower part of the bar for riding in the drops. These handlebars are from the mid to late '90's, and were designed with the use of aero shaped brake hoods in mind. The stem is a 3TTT with a 26.0 clamp diameter.

onespeedbiker

Actually that's a pretty darn good observation (I actually never followed it, but in this case you have something) When I bought my 1999 Schwinn Peleton it had ergo bars and Brifters and the bars were bent way down and the brifters mounted about half way down the front of the bar. While not your bars, I could see you tipping the bars down until the bottom of the drops are parallel with the ground and mounting your brifters lower than normal.

gyozadude

I see someone else using some two-tone ST2200 left in black and ST3300 right brifter in silver :-). I have a modification that's parked outside my office today. 7-speed Shimano 6400 series gruppo (aka 600 Ultegra tri-colour). Here's a pic of what I did and I find it really comfy and stretches out my riding position and lets me spin without over reaching. I replaced the stem with a shorter 100mm one, instead of 120mm. (And I have another cheaper one that's 105mm but with a 40 deg rise just in case). The handlebars, I rotated up so the flats are sloped relative to the ground, but I put the brifters up higher as well. Not sure if the picture does justice. But the price was right ($30 per side for the brifters) and these don't have the upshift release paddles with the lever, so they're for riding the drops more. Got the right 7spd shifter from Bikewagon, and the left side 2 speed from eBay. The left won't pull enough cable unless the pinch bolt cable routing is threaded under the pivot arm which allows the cable to touch the FD pivot spring. But that's the only way to still use the FD6400 front derailleur with the ST2200 black brifter. I find myself sitting back all the way on the saddle and this gets me into a very nice spinning position and not too hunched over. But just in case I wanted a bit closer reach, I bought a really cheap riser stem I found at: https://www.bikewagon.com/kalin-22-2m...0d-silver.html I put one of the Kalin stems on my old Bridgestone 600. I did cold set this frame to 130mm rear spacing and added some axle washers to the rear hub. Shifting is okay with Uniglide but could really benefit from a new chain and a 7spd HG freehub. I bought a couple of those which I keep in stock for my old Deore hub repairs, but so far, it shifts just fine for just a casual ride. I picked up some Velocity Fusion 32H rims and rebuilt wheels. The front hub was trashed so I swapped out with an el cheapo Tiagra 4600 hub. Overall, a good casual bike for commute or club ride. Although the bi-color brifters is a conversation piece.

roobydoo

Here's my solution. A little drop. Urethane foam buildup on lower bars.
I think it turned out well but I may have wrapped in reverse just to make it work

And yes. The two tone eBay special look will be fixed by powder coat when I have time.

roobydoo

Sounds alot like what I'm doing. New hubs, wide 23mm rims, spokes, DIY wheel build. New suntour 7spd rear.
Brake shifters and new bar wrap. Overall same weight.

gyozadude

Roobydoo:

I never got Shimano indexing to work right with Suntour indexed RDs. I have managed to get old vintage Suntour Cyclone RD to sort of work with Shimano indexing. So you'll have to share your secrets on getting the RD shifting to work.

The urethane foam thing is something I never would have thought of. I still can source 46cm wide drop bars in 26.0mm around these parts and have some in stock, although my last few remaining, with shallow bend, are really heavy Sakae CT bars. Funny how you picked the same blue-camo tape. I picked up mine on Tmart.com for like $3 for two rolls. No adhesive backing so I got some 3M two-sided wide carpet tape and wrapped my bars first in that stuff, then the tape goes on and stays on for good. You'll need to let us know how stable the urethane is above the bar if you ride the drops. I figure it would rotate under use. But maybe you had a way to secure it really well.

Now powder coating the handle is something that might be cool to do, but I actually sort of like the two-tone.

Are you also cris-crossing the brifter cables? That is, you cross them in front so the the left shifter goes into the right down tube cable stop and the right shifter crosses over to the left side down tube cable stop? That what I do too and I put some teflon cable liner on the cable that is closest the under side of the frame down tube where the cables criss-cross again to reduce imaginary friction.

I do have a set of grey 700c Mavic MA40's that are wider, and I have set of dark anodized MA40's as well. But I decided to go with narrower Velocity Fusions just to try them out. They're ISO 14x622 rims I think. They are like 20mm outer width. I debated whether to get some Alex DC19s which are semi-aero and really strong as well, but are ISO 16x622 with 22mm outer width. The Fusions were something I've been thinking about testing for durability in 32H for a while. So I put them on. I have a set of DC19s I've abused for about 1000 miles that are just excellent. For a $25 rim, it really works well and isn't too bad on weight. It's in the same class as a Mavic CXP22 at 530grams or so. And has a good wide profile and takes 28c and 32c tires just great.

The debate for me was whether to keep the 7spd FH6400 freehub or revert to older HB6200 series old Shimano 600 EX hubs and go with a 7spd freewheel solution. I kept the freehub and laced it instead of going to a freewheel solution. In hindsight, there are silver 7spd freewheels in 12-25 that fit my bike that are very cheap. But there are very few 7spd cassettes these days that are silver unless you try to find one used on eBay. All the current HG50s are black/brown, although, I can find the same 13-23 HG50 cassette that matches my current Uniglide cassette on the bike. So it was a choice of brown/black HG cassette or keep the Uniglide cassette, which is still okay. I chose to stick with older Uniglide, although I may swap out and go HyperGlide soon just to compare how different the shifting becomes.