Adjusting Handlebar Steering Sensitivity (need help)
 

Dear Members,

I own a Merida road bike and have a question in mind. I wonder how the sensitivity of the steering of a handlebar could be adjusted. When I ride other bikes I feel that it is in a way a bit harder to steer the handlebar which makes it easier to follow a straight line while riding. I want to have the same with my bike as I feel mine is too sensitive for any kind of inputs.

I hope I succeeded in describing the question I have : )

Many thanks in advance.

Best Regards,

Baris

My first suggestion would be to practice more since that won't cost anything. If you really need the bike to handle differently here is where to start reading, http://sheldonbrown.com/gloss_tp-z.html#trail look under "trail" for starters.

Good luck

You could install a Hopey steering damper.

There are two ways you can change the responsiveness of the steering.
1. make the stem longer. This is a Bad Thing to do because the stem length should be set according to your size and shape, not the steering behaviour.
2. replace the fork with one which results in more trail.

It is not worthwhile unless your bike is unrideable. Every bike feels a little different, you can get used to bikes with quite flighty steering.

I think it's the geometry of your frame and/or fork, not lack of stiffness in the headset, that makes your bike respond so quickly.

A bike with a shallow headtube angle and a lot of trail will be slow to respond to steering inputs and more stable in a straight line. Touring bikes are designed this way. Racing (particularly criterium racing) bikes have steeper headtube angles and less trail and are made to be super responsive but less straight line stable.

You do not want stiffness or drag in the headset under any circumstances. You don't want free play but it should turn easily and smoothly.

What other bikes are you riding? Are they also road bikes or are they something else like hybrids or mountain bikes? If they are not road bikes then they are going to feel less twitchy. It just takes some getting used to. You will learn to appreciate that kind of responsiveness when you are trying to dodge a pothole or something else you saw to late.

^^^ what you said

you can have steering dampers but tank slapping is a motorbike curse. don't mess with the headset when it's properly adjusted that could really hurt, just change the fork / stem / seat position as said above.

What size tires are you running? If your running super narrow tires it's going to squirm on you more than if you have some more rubber. Try going from a 700c x 23 to a 25 or 27. It will soak up more bumps and give you a little more pause when turning.

This could be a bent fork.

It has been mentioned already, but you need to have more trail. That means you find a fork that puts the wheel further in front of the bike.

Sorry, more trail moves the front wheel closer to the bottom bracket, all other things being equal. I do think more trail is what you need.

Yes, indeed. I have a bad habit of mixing up which way trail is.

Actually the last two posters both have the term "trail" mixed up.

Trail is the distance down on the ground between the center of the tire contact patch and the spot where the steering axis intercepts the ground. You control this with the angle of the frame's steer tube and the offset amount of the fork.

In the motorcycle world that angle is the rake angle and the offset is the offset. I'm coming to find that in the bicycle world this is altered and these are known as the steering angle and the rake or offset of the fork.

So a fork that has less rake or offset will result in the contact patch being further behind the steering axis to ground intersection point. That distance is the trail. So less rake = more trail.

I'm amused by the idea of a steering damper on a bicycle.

I'm with the early posters in this thread. You need practice. focus further down the road.

Certainly on a road bike one should never be needed. Maybe on a DH mountain bike it could be useful.

I could see that. There's something to be said about the stickers I've seen on more than one steering damper. They all amount to "YOU CHICKEN!" :-)

http://www.konaeurope.com/Prod/00000...fork_small.jpg
More rake, but not too much.

Glad you found it amusing...it was intended as such. ;)

For a DH bike it may give some advantage, but that type of bike has a much slacker head angle and already accomplishes much of what the OP was trying to achieve: Slower steering.

My advice would be to buy a more touring oriented bike with slacker angles.