no rise, no sweep/bend

aebike only lists three bars from nitto and deda, but they're steel and aluminum.


I was considering chopping off some carbon drops, but drops are expensive. So does anyone know where I can get a straight bar in carbon?

The Answer Carbon has an extremely small sweep (3-degrees). I would also look at the FSA carbon flat bar and Race Face carbon flat. I believe the Titec Pluto also comes as a flat-bar. Unsure if they come as 0 sweep.

the only one i have seen that are close are 5 degree sweep which is barely any

Those bars all have 3 degrees sweep. I want flat because I'm hoping to be able to slip the bar out by loosening the stem top...and maybe even do it with a thin layer of tape. That's also why it has to be carbon because metal bars without thick padding are a b**ch in the winter.

What do you mean by stem top? The top cap? Do you mean the stem face plate? If so, you still can, just loosen it more. I think your best bet would be to get a 31.8mm bar, and since the bar diameter tapers in, any sweep would be negated and you could do minimal loosening of the bolts but still remove. Are you not planning on using any grips? Even 26.0 quill stems without removable face plates managed to allow twisty road bars with sharp curves out.

I don't believe you can cut carbon safely IIRC

Might make more sense to get an open face stem than try and find a 0 degree sweep bar. You don't want to run the risk of scratching up a carbon bar sliding it in and out of a stem clamp anyway

Yeah the face plate.

Good point, about the drop bars on quill stems, but it still just seems like it would be more elegant to have something that can slide straight in/out with minimal fiddling, plus there's the scratching issue mentioned by twitcho. As far as upgrading to a 31.8mm stem goes, most (all) of the light weight ones I see have 4-bolt face plates, which I suspect will require two bolts loosened instead of just one.

But I guess I don't have a choice if I can't get a flat carbon bar.

I intend to run an open face stem and I hope to rig up a QR bolt to it so I can slide the handlebar out as easily as the seatpost. I'm just not sure it will work without a unswept bar.

If you have to settle, I would recommend the Ritchey WCS carbon flat. I believe it is 3-degree. I've had a WCS carbon post forever and really love it. Nice carbon, and a nice clear coat over it (unlike the Easton carbon).

The Thomson X2 is a 31.8 with 2-bolt... great stem too, it's slightly stiffer than my WCS.

How fast do you need to change bars? It takes like five minutes to unscrew the four bolts in a stem faceplace entirely, replace the bar, and screw them back in.

You CAN cut carbon bars, there's cut marks and all, just use a hacksaw with the correct blade, the bars will have instructions telling you the correct way.

Finally, I'm not sure about your QR bolt idea, it might be ok for flat bars but I wouldn't trust any kind of quick release on any other kind of bars, not to mention the contradiction of a lightweight stem with whatever kind of QR system you were looking at. A seat post has almost no twisting forces, and if it comes loose you won't be happy, but you also won't go smashing into the front of your bike and the ground. Take note of how many people run standard bolt seat post binders.

In addition, I wouldn't use any kind of QR device with anything carbon. The force you'll be putting on the bar (or seatpost) would be pretty random and hard to control, and especially if you're trying to switch them out fast you might run into over tightening or under tightening issues. The margin for error on carbon is much smaller than steel or aluminum.

Back to the real topic, what are you actually trying to do? Why do you need to change bars as fast as possible? It seems like there'd be any number of better options. Maybe just invest in a nice allen wrench in the size of your stem and keep the bolts nicely greased so you can spin the bolts out/in faster? Open faceplate stems are designed for the faceplate to come off entirely for a reason, it's just easier, loosening them and sliding the bars through seems like too much effort, too limiting in bar covering, and could possibly end up marring the carbon fiber's clear coat.

Thanks, now I will have to find a flat bar like I wanted because it will be my perfect setup.

It's for my folder which is, coincidentally, single speed. It has a heavy split handlebar that basically detaches the two ends. I figure I can get a much lighter setup with standard components if I could only get a flat bar in carbon.

As I said, this is for a folder. There are QR bolts all over the place (including on my 350mm maximally extended carbon seatpost) and I've not had a problem. Perhaps it helps to know that I weigh 125 pounds. If it breaks then I'll try something else, but given the fact that this bike already has a threaded quill over 1 foot long I don't anticipate the stem clamp as a likely point of failure.

Assuming you're actually serious this time (and not taking us down the rabbit hole a la https://www.bikeforums.net/bicycle-mechanics/303648-breaking-chain-without-chain-tool.html , https://www.bikeforums.net/singlespeed-fixed-gear/528696-differences-between-chain-tensioning-methods.html, or https://www.bikeforums.net/singlespeed-fixed-gear/528280-anyone-riding-proper-singlespeed-fixie.html ) what are your goals here?

If you want a flat bar that's warm for your hands, just use a metal flat bar and some grips.

If you're using a 4 bolt face plate, it's probably faster to undo all four bolts, remove the faceplate and take the whole bar off, rather than just loosening 2 bolts, undoing the tape or removing the grips.

Are you using brakes on this bike? If so, you might want to use one of the brakes with the hinged clamp so that comes off the handlebar faster as well.

Like rudetay said, if you do get carbon, you're going to want a toothless hacksaw blade designed for carbon, rather than just using a standard blade.

I CAN'T WAIT to see where this thread goes.

You obviously know the available parts very well. In your opinion is a hacked up drop bar the only way to get my carbon flat bar?

https://www.carbon-tube.com/round.php

Not tapered though...which is probably no better than a 3 degree sweep.

Although I'm not MB/ATB part aficionado, AFAIK 3-degrees is the best you'll get for a carbon flat-bar. But I stress not to quote me on that.

I don't believe it can get much straighter than this - https://www.treefortbikes.com/79_3332...-Flat-Bar.html

Well what about road bars? Are the tops on carbon maes bars what I'm looking for or will hacking off drops not even get me what I want?

Well these bars are straighter; They're just not carbon.

Now you're just trolling

The Easton's come in 3-degree and 5-degree sweep.

I don't think that the road bars will wholly get what you're looking for. For instance, the plain ones will have cable guides. Also, you'll need something to deburr the carbon after you saw it. Plus you're paying a lot of money to hack bars for 3-degrees, not worth IMO. I'd still recommend finding 31.8 carbon bars and using those with the Thomson X2 stem. The bars will taper in enough where you won't have much to worry about in the way of scratching (although what grips you use will matter, or tape) even if you marginally loosen the bolts.

I think you're missing a vital point here. If you have the Thomson stem you can just completely remove the front plate and the sweep/size/grip whatever about the bar is completely irrelevant. That way you can make choices based on fit and comfort, not on some strange limiting idea that won't end up saving time at all. You won't even need a carbon bar with this set-up because you could just wrap up the entire bar. Or, you could just use gloves and the warmth element won't matter.

In response to the QR again, I can assure you that the bike did not come designed with QRs intended to be used with carbon parts. It might work fine for you so far, but when it does fail it will either be a crack that will make your expensive carbon bars unsafe to use, or it will just snap. It may never happen, but when there is a very easy way to do things as it is intended, why not follow the instructions? I can't imagine the difference between screwing two bolts and doing a QR is more than a minute or two. I can't even imagine how you would get a QR to work with a Thomson stem, let alone any other modern oversized stem. If you have a method, I'd love to see it.

You proposal of cutting down road bars is equally as weird, you're going to have a very narrow bar that will likely have cable grooves and other "features" and even after that will likely not match your perfectly straight requirement. A 3 degree sweep bar cut to the width you'd get from road bars would have such a small sweep it wouldn't even be noticeable.

Just because you have devised an overcomplicated and convoluted solution to a very easy problem doesn't mean you need to continue making it difficult when easier solutions are presented to you.

But, you mention it uses a quill stem...so will any of this even be possible? You'll end up running a quill extender to a quill to threadless adaptor, to a threadless stem, to carbon bars? And, finally with a QR on that? Seems like if weight is a concern there's lots of other areas you could drop it.

Are you related to BigBris?

you could always just buy some carbon fiber tubing if having 0 sweep is so important

The problem is that while it's easy to see that an unswept bar will provide the most margin for error, I'm not entirely sure how much that margin will be compromised by a 3 degree sweep.

3 degrees amounts to a 5% change in rise over run on average. I'm not sure how wide the face plate is on the Thomson, but assuming it's around 2 inches, in the worst case scenario (all the sweep from a single kink) I'll need 2.5mm of extra play in the loosened stem clamp just for the sweep which doesn't leave much room for tape on even a 31.8/22.2 tapered bar. This is, of course, the worst case scenario, but I like to have a margin of safety when dropping hundreds on parts sight unseen.

It depends on where exactly the bar bends and how much clearance I'll be able to get with a QR bolt in the face plate without compromising consistent clamping force.

The "quill stem" is really a "quill stem riser"; that is a straight 1" tube (for 1-1/8" steerer) with expander wedge at the bottom. It's basically like a quill to threadless adapter except it doesn't taper. The expander bolt is also QR.

A threadless stem is attached to this riser which is attached to a short (maybe 6"?) 25.4mm diameter bar. This bar has no taper, a 22.2mm internal diameter, and a QR collar on each end into which two additional 22.2mm bars are inserted (one on each side) with grips, levers, etc attached. To "fold" the handlebars, the left and right QR clamps are opened and the two 22.2 bars are extracted, leaving just the middle 25.4mm bar and the QR collars.

So while what I'm proposing may sound overcomplicated or convoluted it is still far simpler, easier, and more standard than the stock setup. The main thing enabling the simplification is that I run only a front brake and am willing to compromise on the grips, allowing the single middle stem clamp to perform the same function as the two QR collars and eliminating the three-piece handlebar entirely.

The total time to fold the bike is well under 30 seconds including the handlbars and, in fact, most times I don't even fold the bars at all because it takes too long. So switching to something that would take a minute and incurs the risk of losing small parts (like the face plate or bolts) is unacceptable, although I would be willing to just loosen a single bolt with an allen key if I can't make a QR setup work.

I don't want to discuss what components are or are not designed for because I have a history of using components as they are not designed with great success and for someone reason that makes people really angry and gets my threads locked, which destroys my chances of picking the brains of forum members.

I'm also hesitant to post that my end goal is actually "folding" because I don't want to be told to ask in the folding forum when 0 sweep bars are, for some reason, marketed as fixie bars.

There's two reasons why I can't use untapered tubing like that:
1. I'm running a front brake so the bar needs to taper down because the diameter a handlebar needs at the stem clamp is too wide for any kind of lever.
2. I'd like to use at least a thin layer of tape for wet grip, so I also need some taper for it to slide through the stem clamp.