Plainsman

Anyone have experience with this. I'm finishing out a road bike for a 9 year old girl, and I'm buying new bars. Using the old rule of thumb (measuring from the bony projection at outside of shoulder), she would be 34-35cm. I could go with a 36cm bar, but since she is coming from a kid's flat bar bike, I wondered if a little more width (say 38cm) might give her more stability. The bike she is on now is closer to 55 cm for the flat bar. I think 40 would be too wide, but wondering whether 36 or 38 would be the sweet spot. Any advice welcome!

buffalowings

How tall is she? I would probably go with the 36 because it's closest to her actual shoulder width. I think the difference in stability between the 36 and 38 is negligible. When I swapped my 42 cm bars for a 40cm, the adjustment period was really unnoticeable.

pmt

38 or 40 should be fine.

Plainsman

She is exactly 4'-6". I may be investing too much thought into this, but as it's here first road bike I want to make sure she has a good experience. The stock bars have a long reach and deep drop so I'm replacing them no matter what. The current bars are 40cm wide. One train of thought I had was that wider would make her more stable, especially since she will likely get her bearings by steering from the top of the bars. Afraid though that 40 might be wide when she transitions to the hoods. Though it seems technically right, I didn't know if 36 would be too big of a change from flat bar width to make her steering twitchy.

Jakedatc

To be comfortable she'll want to have the correct width. having her arms out like a Y will be hard to ride. steering a mtn bike is different than a road bike.. smaller movements are better than large swings that a mtn bike needs for obstacles at slower speed.