Pretty sure he's referring to places where a large percentage of the population ride bikes with upright bars for basic transportation.

I tried using Ergolevers with Ritchey Biomax II bars, a few years ago. The bend-back of the "anatomic" area of the bar (what you show as "drops when braking ... ") was a lot more extreme than on your bars, but that straight section made it hard for me to reach the brake levers. I found a moderate-drop conventional bar with a large radius of curvature (Maes-style), such as a Nitto 115, 176, or 177 (Noodle), brought my hands closer to the brake and shift levers. I think you could get your hands between 1 and 2 cm closer to the brake levers if you changed to one of those bars.

They are riding utility bikes for transportation and most of them know about as much about bikes as your typical housewife knows about the internal workings of her blender or her soccer van. Does owning a blender or having a van make you an expert on those machines, does riding a POS 50 pound slug through the streets of Bombay like my customer I have in this week does every day make him an expert cyclist, dude, get real.

I have a comfort bike also with a high bar but I am not riding my Pinarello around with the seat down on the top tube and my bars extended with an extender piece either. And you know, I don't have any springs on my saddles either.

All right, all right - there isn't any cause to be insulting. Tone it down a bit.

Grant Peterson fit works for some, not for others. Don't make bar height a hot-button topic.

-Kurt

Your mother is a hamster...

I think the ideal is to set the bars even or slightly higher, either with a threaded stem at max height or a thread less with spacers, then gradually lower it, until you find the sweet spot, this is going to be different for different riders, and may even be different from one bike to another for the same rider. There is no hard and fast rule that bar height must have a certain amount of drop.

Where it gets interesting is that some riders, have the idea that you need this massive amount of drop, and in order to get enough drop, they go with a too small frame, put the bars as low as possible and jack the saddle way up. I think this is one of the reasons that back in the day they would recommend a 58cm frame and today they recommend a 56 or even a 54cm frame for the same rider. The recommendation in the 1970's was to put a leg over the top tube, if there was a couple of inches of clearance, you were good. They would give about 3 inches (a fist full) of seat post. Generally considering that the seatpost clamp and headset locknut were about the same height, there would be 2-4 inches of stem showing. This meant the bars were somewhere between 1" above and 2" below, depending on the height of the saddle and the stem.

We've already noted that you're an elite cyclist. Congratulations.
The OP was asking a general question, and didn't indicate he was looking to optimize his speed. Most folks in the U.S. in the 70's were purely recreational riders, and I suspect that with his "too large" Medici touring bike, the OP is one also. Even C&V'ers who enjoy the sensation of speed on a bike are all over the map with regard to age, power, personal preferences and physical limitations. The sensibility of the Forum here is to be inclusive and welcoming. Feel free to tell us your preferences, and provide historic information about how folks usually set their bikes up. It would be much appreciated though, if belittling remarks directed towards others be kept to yourself.

Apropos the title of this thread, here's a photo from the 1971 Colnago Road Test thread:



But I guess the discussion has moved on to weightier philosophical matters.

This is my touring set up that have been using for a very long time... the hoods are at the same height as the saddle (+/- 1cm) and when I need to get low the drops are in a position where I can ride in them for hours if need be and can utilize all the hand positions that are available.

I make very good time on this bike and usually run out faster than the average tourist.

This is a pretty classic set up for drop bar bikes that were not used for racing or sport / club riding and back before there was such specialization a bike that was used on club rides would have also served as daily transportation so the quill stem allowed the rider to move his bars up and down to suit the type of riding.

I have compared my Viscount to the pictures in the Viscount ads I have, and the stem is just slightly lower. The top of the stem is roughly even with the middle of the seat clamp in the ads. In the pictures and my on my bike, the length of the exposed seat post is less than the length of the steering tube.

I have a couple of inches of clearance with the top of the frame, and the handlebars are two inches (not three) lower than the seat. That was how we set bikes up when I worked in a shop in the 1970s.









I have not altered the seatpost or stem height since I set it up in the 1970s; just replaced the awfull stif Viscount seat with the present seat. Others have pointed out that the drops on the handlebars are pretty deep; I have had trouble staying down in the drops until I lost some weight and got a little of my flex back; I can ride down in the drops for a little while now.

-James