Are there any "tricks" for aligning your handlebars perfectly at 90 degrees with your front wheel, I can always get it "close" but think I'm a bit OCD about it ... would love to know if there are any good methods of doing it rather than just by eye.

I'd imagine you could try using a carpenter's speed square. Place it along the back side of the straight section of the bars, then look downward onto the top of the tire behind the fork, and align with the other edge.

Close one eye.

It's annoying when the bar alignment is just slightly off.

Stand over the bike. Sight down to the hub, with the front of the stem clamp directly over the hub. Then I can see if each edge of the clamp shows the same amount of hub. And the tire must be centered on the hub view at the same time.

I don't think a carpenter's square would work very well with the bars taped.

I'm thinking that if you took two pieces of string and tied one end of each around the valve stem of your front wheel and then measured each as they extended to the top of each hood...when both lengths were equal it would be pretty good. No? I think it's geometry.

If you have a good eye you can notice how off-center the bar bends themselves are.

A local shop uses a jig made of 2x4. It was pretty cool.

Attach a 6-8in long fishing line to a round stick or something a little wider than your bars, and at the end of the line tie a small lead fishing sinker w/eyelet. Then lay the stick across your bars with the tied end of the line in the middle of the faceplate of the stem and center it until the sinker is hanging above the center of the tire.

I also saw a guy who made a wooden "T" thing. The horizontal section was a little wider than the bars and rested across them.The vertical section was screwed onto the bottom center and would hang down above the tire. Then he centered it like I described with the fishing line.

That's what I think too. It makes more of a difference than you'd think.

When I was a kid growing up, my mother would make my big sister and me share one candy bar. My sister, since she was older, got to cut the candy bar in half. I got to pick first. How I agonized over that decision. It didn't occur to me until much later that, if it was that hard to tell which "half" was bigger, it wasn't different enough to matter.

When I had my own bike shop I found a different solution to the problem. Whenever a customer complained about the handlebar alignment, I'd have the customer straddle the bike while I'd loosen the clamp. Then I'd ask the customer to tell me when the alignment was perfect and I'd tighten the clamp. Done!

I can't give credit since I've forgotten the source, but their idea was to take a steel straightedge about a foot long, and rest it on the edge of the top of the bar clamp. Then sighting along the edge of the tire to gage alignment. I didn't have great luck with this method, but it spurred another way to use a straightedge to align.

I hold the straightedge on the back of the fork crown and sight down the back edge of the handlebars.

I was not aware that jigs and plum lines and 2x4's were a thing for aligning handlebars.

Maybe I'm reckless but I just look at it.


-Tim-

Ha. similar story in a way.. in our house, it was kids splitting the last ear of corn with dad.. His system however was that kids got to break it in half, but he got to pick which half.

I've always intended to rig up something with two plum bobs and a 2x4 but I've been too lazy to implement it. I can usually get it pretty good by eyeballing it, but there is always kind of a nagging worry that it's not *exactly* perfect.

1. Eyeball it
2. Ride no hands. Look good? No?
3. Loosen. Move. Tighten. Go to step 2. Repeat as necessary.

Seeing bars and hub axle parallel , by eye sight does not work for you??

Truth! Just look down the top tube,stem, and front wheel.Leave it a little loose and give it a tap to align, tighten down. Can't imagine bringing out plumb bobs, straight edges, or the laser level to align.

Tune Spurtreu uses a laser to perfectly align your stem | road.cc

1) Hang the bike on a hook from the ceiling. Make sure that anything that weights one side is removed. You want the bike as close to 90 deg vertical as possible.
2) Set up a self-leveling laser cross hair level
3) Aim the vertical laser line to align with your front wheel, stem, top tube, and rear wheel. Note: there is no guarantee that they are aligned perfectly
4) Aim the horizontal laser line to align with your bar. If your bar is curved, you may have to lash a straight edge to it for this phase.
5) Adjust as necessary until both vertical and horizontal lines are congruent with the bike and bars.
Success!

Or you can do what I do and just eyeball it. Good luck in either case

You could try something like this for both saddle and stem:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B071SHLJTH/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

The easiest way I could describe it would be an "H" that was much like a modified wood clamp that was mated to a "T" upper section. Straddled the top of the tire and has the T section lay against (as it were) the front side of handlebars. It did not rely on nor have to take into account which way the frame/headset was aligned. On my hybrid I was testing an adjustable feedneck in store and the mech laid it up there for me to use as a guide.

I just keep dicking with it until it stops bothering me. Not the most efficient, but it gets me there eventually.

Using a plumb line is only going to work if the bike is perfectly upright.

Personally, I turn the wheel so I can see the front and back of the tire, then center both the back and front of the stem with the sections of tire appearing below each.

Have you sought treatment for your OCD?

Just wondering why not? Unless the taping is done irregularly, the surface of the tape would still be parallel to the bars. But, I've never had a need to align them any way other than by sight, so it's a moot point for me.