bfloyd

Hello all. Are they still making flat handlebars for road bikes? Where can they be purchased? I understand that the standard road stem and bar clamp diameters are 26.0 and the mtb standard is 25.4. Will a 26.0 road stem clamp down enough to securely hold a 25.4 mtb flat bar? Thanks.

Patriot

Not sure. I've never tried it. They do make 31.8mm flat bars though.

AnthonyG

Flat road bars are becoming available in 26 mm clamp diameter for just your purpose. I think Bontrager has them available and they take 22.2 mm mountain bike size controls.

Regards, Anthony

thewalrus

reminds me of a section of zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance, which I have sitting on my hard drive...

================

He agreed to use my metric sockets and box-ends.
When he brought his motorcycle over I got my wrenches out but then
noticed that no amount of tightening would stop the slippage, because the
ends of the collars were pinched shut.
``You're going to have to shim those out,'' I said.
``What's shim?''
``It's a thin, flat strip of metal. You just slip it around the handlebar under
the collar there and it will open up the collar to where you can tighten it
again. You use shims like that to make adjustments in all kinds of machines.''
``Oh,'' he said. He was getting interested. ``Good. Where do you buy them?''
``I've got some right here,'' I said gleefully, holding up a can of beer in my
hand.
He didn't understand for a moment. Then he said, ``What, the can?''
``Sure,'' I said, ``best shim stock in the world.''
I thought this was pretty clever myself. Save him a trip to God knows where
to get shim stock. Save him time. Save him money.
But to my surprise he didn't see the cleverness of this at all. In fact he got
noticeably haughty about the whole thing. Pretty soon he was dodging and
filling with all kinds of excuses and, before I realized what his real attitude
was, we had decided not to fix the handlebars after all.
As far as I know those handlebars are still loose. And I believe now that he
was actually offended at the time. I had had the nerve to propose repair of
his new eighteen-hundred dollar BMW, the pride of a half-century of
German mechanical finesse, with a piece of old beer can!
Ach, du lieber!

Since then we have had very few conversations about motorcycle
maintenance. None, now that I think of it.
You push it any further and suddenly you are angry, without knowing why.
I should say, to explain this, that beer-can aluminum is soft and sticky, as
metals go. Perfect for the application. Aluminum doesn't oxidize in wet
weather...or, more precisely, it always has a thin layer of oxide that prevents
any further oxidation. Also perfect.
In other words, any true German mechanic, with a half-century of
mechanical finesse behind him, would have concluded that this particular
solution to this particular technical problem was perfect.
For a while I thought what I should have done was sneak over to the
workbench, cut a shim from the beer can, remove the printing and then
come back and tell him we were in luck, it was the last one I had, specially
imported from Germany. That would have done it. A special shim from the
private stock of Baron Alfred Krupp, who had to sell it at a great sacrifice.
Then he would have gone gaga over it.

Deanster04

I have built up a long distance bike for touring. I am using a MTB flatbar with a thin seatpost shim that I cut to fit. Any RedBull can is trimable into a wonderful shim. So far it is working out well. With MTB levers with my Campy Chorus brakes and Campy 10spd barend shifters mounted on a semi aero clipon my bike looks like a TT bike. It is working extremely well and no problems with elbows nor hands.