tpelle

I have a Trek 820 mountain bike that I don't ride very much - mostly because I really prefer road-riding and do so on my Surly Long Haul Trucker. I've converted the Trek into a "bad weather/bad road/Winter" bike by adding fenders and lights.

I also experience numbness in my hand due to the mountain bike bars with only one hand position. In order to remedy this, I decided to add trekking bars. I just swapped the bars this evening, and although I think what I have is workable in the short term I would really prefer something a little more elegant.

The main problem is the standard Shimano shifter/brake lever. If you notice in the following picture.....

....I actually have the trekking bars installed "backwards" - the "open end" of the bars should be towards the rear. But you can see that there is insufficient room for the controls if the bar is properly installed, and also it was impossible to slide the mounting bracket for the controls around the curves of the bar to get them there anyway.

Here's a picture from Sheldon Brown's site showing mtb bars and trekking bars side-by-side to indicate what I'm trying to get to:


Just for the record, here's some close-ups of the two shifter/brake control units:



I'm thinking that I'd maybe like to swap the shifters and brake levers out for more "conventional" separate units that would integrate better with the trekking bars. As for shifters, I have bar-end shifters on the Long Haul Trucker and really like them, and so would not be opposed to going that route.

Here's a pic of the bike as it exists today:


Does anyone have any suggestions? If I did replace the shifter/brake levers would I be able to keep the same cables?

tpelle

Poking around on the 'net, I found these for shifters:
https://www.bikeparts.com/search_resu...p?ID=BPC329490

And maybe these for brake levers:
https://www.bikeparts.com/search_resu...p?ID=BPC109170

It looks like in both cases, though, there is a "mounting ring" that has to snake it's way around the curve of the bars. This is the crux of the problem, I think.

sonatageek

I have the Nashbar trekking bar on my Raleigh M60 mountain bike and the Alivio brake/shifters fit on the bar fine, mounted the proper direction. I haven't re-done the cables yet, they don't look quite right as they were mounted on the straight bar that was replaced, but everything seems to work just fine.

tpelle

Here's another option:

https://www.rivbike.com/search/run?qu...product=17-124

These would let me run conventional bar-end shifters set up as thumb shifters. I love the bar-end shifters on my Long Haul Trucker! With a set of regular brake levers, I'd be good to go.

dabac

With your setup you've created a very stretched riding position, pretty much as if you'd doubled the stem length. But if that's what you want, then fine.
You seem to want the controls up front and you've got it, so what's the problem? The aestethics of an unconventional mounting method of a trekking bar on your bad-weather(secondary bike)? Or is it that the lengthwise bits of the bar now are flared out towards the front?

The usual way of treating trekking bars is to install them with the opening facing rear, and that leaves you with two straight sections where controls are installed just as if they were on a flat bar( but a bit closer to the rider).

If you're intent on having the curly bits forward AND the controls up front, then I suppose some creativity must be applied. I don't think flat bar brake levers will work very well regardless of make. They need a reasonably straight piece of bar to sit on in order for the lever to end up within good reach of the bar, and that's in rather short supply on a normally oriented trekking bar.
The ones in the pic you posted are drop bar levers, and they OTOH must sit on the outside face of a curve in order not to bottom out against the bar.

Bar-end shifters might not work out that well on a trekking bar. MTB and road bars typically use different diameters, and I believe the trekking bar qualifies as a MTB bar. Road gear that mounts to the outside could be shimmed, but for internal mount it might get trickier. Where to run the cable could be interesting too.

SuperFatDave

If you want to use bar end/bar con shifters on the trekking style bars, you would need to get a pair of Paul's Components Thumbies.

I have a Trek 520. Originally I did not want to use the drop bars that came w/the bike, so I installed a pair of Delta Ergo bars [ there's another bar choice for you ]. The Paul's Thumbies allowed me to turn me my 9 speed bar end/bar con shifters into 9 speed indexed or friction thumbshifters.

They come in 2 sizes one to fit on bars w/25.4mm clamp diameter, the other size fits on bars w/26.0mm clampo area [ I have a pair of each, I installed the 26.0mm thumbies on to the center section of my road bars, in case I want to try them there, haven't felt like doing it yet ].

Check it out, your lbs may need to special order them though.

tpelle

The stretched-out riding position is actually working out OK - the top tube on this bike is kind of short, and with the original flat bars, if I stood up in the pedals, I felt like I was going to tip over in a forward somersault! I measured the saddle-to-hand position length, and with these bars, the Trek is now in a very similar zone to that of my Surly Long Haul Trucker (which feels great!).

tpelle

A couple of posts above I posted a link to the Rivendell site which pointed to the Paul's Components Thumbies. I'm still thinking about these things. They're available in both road bike and mtb bar diameters. I tried using this bike as a winter bike last winter, riding it in the dark, and found that I was uncomfortable using the stock shifters in the dark - couldn't see the little number in the window on the shifter, and every now and then, if I shift up from the middle to the big chainring, I'll shift it right off the ring. I don't have that problem with the bar-end shifters on my Long Haul Trucker - I can pretty much tell what gear I'm in just by feeling the angle of the levers on the shifters - and would like to duplicate that functionality on the Trek.

So, assuming i went the Paul's Thumbies route, what brake levers would be appropriate?

SuperFatDave

Will it be for the Trek 820 pictured or the Surly LHT?

If the Surly, is that bar represented in one of the other pics?

SuperFatDave

Nother silly question for you?

You seen the Modolo trekking bars?

Check out the pics on their site. I thought that they had a modular trekking bar on their site.

Then it's just a question of finding a way to get em

dwnptrl_777

I just shipped a Modolo Yuma Traveller bar from SJS (to me, in the USA). Took about 10 days total to get here. Now to scour the Forums (including this thread) and figure out the details...