Handlebars
 

Any suggestions on some good choices? Carbon and compact i am thinking
I am 5'6" and want to be able to change hand positions without changing reach and such
My current carbon Bontrager bars are ok but wrists hit bar when in drops and hard to reach brakes when in drops

Zipp SL bar - short and shallow (SS) model

That's such a personal decision...it completely varies I guess.

Personaly? I currently have Ritchey EVO Curve bars and find them to be extremely comfortable.

If I ever decided to go with carbon "bling"...the Specialized S-Works Aerofly are seriously nice looking. I strongly doubt I would though, the EVO has been superb thus far.

Using 3T Ergonova. Love it, tighter shallower drops. Flat top for resting your hands. They run narrow at the hoods and fair out at the drops.

That was my suggestion. Or, the Ergosum in aluminum. Much cheaper in cost than Ritchey and Zipp.

FSA Kwing Carbon compact. Great bar for the $$$. I like the new Specialized Sworks carbon bar. Specialized knows a lot about rider ergonomics...saddles...frames...and their new handlebar doesn't disappoint.

You should examine the effect that bar angle has on your ability to reach the brakes when in the drops. Angling the bar (hoods) up makes it harder to reach the brakes from the drops. Angling the bar down puts the hoods too far away both in reach and drop. I find there is only a very small sweet spot where I like the reach to the hoods and can comfortably reach the brake levers in the drops. I go through various iterations of setting the bar angle until I find that spot.

Robert

Here's a tutorial on bar shapes: http://ruedatropical.com/2009/03/roa...-bar-geometry/

And I used suggestions from this on some of the last bars I bought: http://velonews.competitor.com/2011/...dlebars_197289

Which Bontragers do you have? The bars have different shapes and therefore have different forearm clearances.

Keep in mind that different bars have different reach and drop so changing a bar may require a stem length or angle change or both.

The forearm thing is a normal problem. In the old days (until this year) I used "crit bend" bars to clear the top bend of the bar. Now I use a compact style bar, in my case an FSA Wing/compact bar.

In terms of fit the compact bar is 3 cm shorter and 3 cm more shallow than my old "medium drop back in the day" crit bend bars. This required me to get a stem that made up those dimensions. Due to the old 12 cm stem length I only got back 2.5 cm reach but had to get the 3 cm more drop to position the drops in virtuality the same place as before. This required a custom stem.

That's funny...he recommends the EVO Curve and Prologo Double Touch bar tape...exactly what I ran last year.

The EVO has a large diameter so liek he mentioned, the thick tape like the Double Touch was a bit much. Although very comfortable, it gets dirty easy and my sweaty mits soaked into the tape at times.

This year I'm trying out Prologo Pro-OneTouch tape...well see how it goes. The white with black lettering is a bit loud so we'll see if I like the way it looks...

Thanks for the link - was interesting to see this summarized in one page. Put the FSA Wing Pro compact bars on one the bikes last summer - I like them so far, but really can't complain about any of the bars that I have.