Handlebar height with a B17
 

How much higher foes every think I can have the handlebars over a B17 saddle before I need to go with a wider saddle?

B17, Seems about the same height is what Riv Bike's Grant Peterson suggests .

My Brooks touring saddle was the Team Pro. for my Drop Bar Bike..


My trekking Bar bikes get used a lot locally so I leave the Leather saddles inside the house .

The One I use is Pleather covered .. wet impervious.

a Plastic Bag was deployed on Tours over the Brooks saddle.

The B17 is designed to be ridden at a height equal to or lower than the handlebars.
Yes there will be people who ride them outside of these parameters but they are exceptions to the rule.

Sheldon says: "The B17 is most appropriate for cyclists who set their handlebars about the same height as their saddles, or a bit lower." (http://www.sheldonbrown.com/harris/saddles/brooks-b17.html)

I'm not sure I understand the question. If the B17 fits you, why would you need a wider saddle because you have raised the handlebars?

For what it's worth, I have a B17 on a drop-bar touring bike. I can set the handlebars to be about 2 cm below the saddle and be comfortable. If I lower the bars more than that, the saddle starts to press into my perineum. But I can't see that raising the bars, if that's what you're asking, could cause a problem.

My bar is a few inches (3-4?) higher than my B17, and it's very comfortable.

you need to tilt the nose of the saddle up

If you need a wider saddle, you will know it. In other words, don't listen to us, listen to your rear.

I use a B17 on my indoor trainer where I sit completely upright or leaning slightly forward. I occasionally have used a Flyer (essentially a sprung B17) on my expedition bike but that is when I put on the suspension fork and pretend it is a mountain bike, in which case I am sitting more upright on the bike.

On my drop bar bikes I use a narrower saddle than a B17. On one drop bar bike I use the Pro and on four other drop bar bikes I use a Conquest which essentially is a sprung Pro.

Likely the only relevant advice available anywhere:thumb:

The higher the handle bars the more upright you sit. The more upright you sit the wider you need your saddle.

Fair point, I might try my B17 off my racer with my new turing bike, and decide if it works or not, and then buy a new Brookes for it. The handle bars wont be super high just 2-4in.

Just my experiernce here...

I set up a Ti frame with a Brooks Ti B17 with the drop handlebars at or just above the saddle height. I toured Vancouver Island with the bike as its initial major outing, and did a bit of randonneuring training with it as well as some additional short tours. But that Vancouver Island trip resulted in a sore sitbone that just wouldn't go away for something like three years. I think it might have been a case of bursitis.

Anyway, in our new phase of randonneuring, we have been tinkering with our bike fit, and Machka wanted the bars on her Bike Friday Pocket Llama lowered to relieve some pressure one one of her sitbones. It seemed to help, and we did the same with her Marinoni.

I got to thinking about doing the same with the Ti bike, did so, and lo and behold! The sore sitbone has now recovered and I've ridden a 200 and 300km randonnee since.

So I would suggest a bit of caution with the set-up. At first sign of sitbone soreness, think about lowering the handlebars incrementally. It will tilt your pelvis foward and change the angle of pressure on the sitbones.

I've since gone through my Thorn touring bike, as well as my Bike Friday and CF Merlin dropping the bars by 10mm or so. Having a ready supply of 5 and 10mm spacers helped with the integrated headsets and such.

azza_333, I wish I could give a set answer, but my experience is that experimenting is the only way to find a comfortable balance between perineum pressure and sit bone pressure. Handlebar width and tilt, along with height can help with saddle comfort issues. Both of my touring bikes have wider saddles than my roadies or my mountain bike, so I do agree that a wider seat pan is better for a their more relaxed cockpit positioning. Their handlebars are still below the saddle, however. Good luck adjusting for higher handlebar positioning.

Brad

Interesting, I would not have expected this.

Reach is an important factor too. I have slightly less reach on my expedition bike than on my rando bike, thus sit a bit more upright even though the handlebars are the same height (relative to the saddle height) on each of those two bikes. My folding bike has much less reach than my rando bike, I have the handlebars quite a bit lower on that bike to get the same amount of forward lean in my lower back on the folding bike.

That makes sense. It's a bit of a side topic, but lowering bars is not only to reduce wind resistance, it also takes some of the weight off your rear. When people new to long distance cycling presume that they will be more comfortable the more upright they are, they are mistaken.

Anyhow I've been experimenting with fit a bit on my B17 equipped PX10, which is set up as a touring bike. At the moment the seat is dead level and I'm finding about 1.5" inches of drop to the handlebars is about the practical limit. Lower than that and your stuff starts getting squished when on the drops. Perhaps 1" drop would be about ideal for most people. I actually prefer 2", so I'm going to try a degree or two of nose down and see how that goes. FWIW I rode a PX10 with a very old B17 as my commute bike for years with more drop than that, and it was totally comfortable. Perhaps it was because the seat was very old and saggy.

Yep. I did the higher handlebar thing for a couple years about a decade ago, because I had little experience of my own and figured Grant Petersen and Sheldon Brown were surely the only experts worth listening to. I was kind of disappointed that I never felt quite as comfy on and not quite as happy with the handling of my new LHT as I had on my old Miyata 210. I finally put it together after two and a half years or so, only after I'd started road riding and racing. I flipped the stem over on the LHT and dropped a spacer or two, and it was like night and day. The bike felt great after that. Today, if I were going to throw some bags on one of my bikes and go for a long tour, I wouldn't want the bars as low as I have them on my road bike, but the 2-3 inches of drop I have on my cyclocross bikes would be perfect. These days when I see anyone say "for more comfort, you need higher bars," like it's an unalterable maxim, I pretty much just :rolleyes:. It really depends. That's undoubtedly true for some people, but you might be surprised; I know at least one person with a bad back who runs a lot of drop partly because that's what keeps his spine at a comfortable alignment.

As for the B-17, I see upthread someone saying it was "designed" to be at or slightly above bar level. Is that so? I doubt it, simply because it's such an old design and the high drop bar is a recent trend (last 15-20 years) pretty much entirely inspired by Petersen and others of his persuasion. It might be optimal relatively close to handlebar level, but there's room to fiddle and I really don't know if that was the intent of the designer way back when.

LOL. Yeah, while I greatly admire the contributions of both those dudes, they are not infallible.

I haven't raced or for that matter ridden long miles every day regularly since I was a teenager, but back then I honestly don't remember my rear being sore, despite ~400 miles/week and 3-4" drop. Sore legs, yes, that was continual...

AFA the B17 not being for dropped position, I think you are correct that it is somewhat of a modern myth, but still IME there's some truth to it. I will be curious to see how the Swift works out on my new Mercian. I am glad I went with that instead of another B17, as the shape seems near identical to the old Avocet/Sella Italia racing saddle on my Masi.

About four years ago I was on a tour and my saddle was not quite right, I was putting more pressure on the soft tissues than I wanted to. I tried angling the nose up a bit and that improved it greatly for me because with the nose lower, I was sliding forward. But the nose more upward it forced me to sit a bit further back on the saddle where my sit bones sat on the leather better.

I'm glad you brought that up. One thing I have noticed about B17s is that they are quite long, and if you are sitting too far forward, your sit bones are not going to be in optimum position. While angling up would not work for my position, I did get quite a comfort improvement when I moved my seat forward by about 1cm on the post. I had it slammed pretty far back originally, now it's in the middle of the adjustment area. Much better and probably about optimum with the 72º seat tube on my Peugeot.

100% agree. As I've gotten older/more experienced, I've come to better understand that everyone really just has their own collection of preferences and experiences, and there's a context to evaluate their ideas in. One thing that really struck me about Petersen's book a few years back was how much of his perspective obviously comes from living in northern California, of all things. His clothing advice in particular. I still respect them both (RIP Sheldon), but it turns out I'm a different sort of bike rider than either one. That said, some of what Petersen says about handlebars really gets my goat because he's guilty of disseminating claims about handlebar height, reach and shoulder anatomy that are completely the reverse of reality. To the point of distributing deeply misleading diagrams and everything. But I'm trying to avoid that rant, it's not really relevant. :)

Oh sure, I'm not saying it's wrong to say the B17 works well for bars above the saddle, I just doubt it was intentionally designed for that.

Only up to a point. A B17 is quite wide. In my own case I wouldn't need to swap it for anything wider even if I sat quite upright. But only by experimentation will you find whether that is true for you.

I've been lucky on my Surly Long Haul Trucker.... the handlebars are the same height as the seat, and after much research and deliberation, I ended up buying a Gilles Berhout Aravis leather saddle with titanium rails

not cheap, and i took a chance, but it's comfort straight out of the box. I don't even think about the saddle when I ride. Mine is set dead level (not tilted up)

I have a Brooks B15 champion narrow on my daily commuter roadbike, and that took lots of miles to break in ... I still need to adjust my position sometimes when I ride, and it's not as comfortable as the Aravis. I'm thinking of selling it and getting another Aravis