Looking for Handlebar Recommendations

[Gregory Carlsen]

So I'm over a year and 5,000-ish miles into riding my V20c and I'm starting to think it's time to change out the stock handlebars. I know there are recommendations on the forum but I don't seem to be able to define search terms specific enough to get to what I want to know. So here it goes.

I have pretty wide shoulders but I have plenty of knee clearance with the cross part of the bar. I experience only very infrequent and inconsequential contact between a leg and a brifter - usually in a turn and when I get sloppy with my knee position. I'm feeling like my arms are bit to far out on either side of the bars. A few questions.

Are there 6 foot 200 lbs riders with bars narrower than the stock bars out there?

Does it sound like time to switch to narrower handlebars?

Do you have any handlebar recommendations?

 

[Frito Bandito]

I have pretty wide shoulders for being 5'10", and my V20 came with 440mm bars. I used them for a while, but then came across 400mm bars that I put brifters on. On paper I had a bit of pep in my step with the 400mm flared bars, but due to knee strikes in turns I had to angle the bars up so high that the brifters had to be twisted out making the whole setup likely less aero than the original 440 flared bars. The whole setup looked kinda silly IMO.

Now, I have a 420mm Deda Tribar, SRAM AXS wireless brifters, and bar end Campagnolo Super Record TT brake levers. For grips, I alternate between muscling on golf grips with water based gel after letting them soak in hot water to make installation easier, and some cheap foam grips I buy at the hardware store. It is an incredibly light system overall, and when cruising at anything below about 170 watts, I can just rest my hands on the tops. For higher power output I can wrap my fingers around the TT brakes and pull for a bit of extra power, but as you can imagine the brake lever shape was designed to be aero not used to be yanked on. With the mirror removed or moved up towards the brake levers I can rest my hands closer together on the top near the goose neck for comfort, but this leaves my elbow poking out a little and makes the bike twitchy, especially when doing anything slower than about 30kph because it feels what I think a tiller style steering would feel like even though I have never tried one.

 

[ratz]

6ft you are going to want 44mm/46mm wide bars with a 114mm drop. Traditional style not compact.

I would recommend looking at whiskybars the 6f road bars with the deeper drop. If you go with the 12f you get more flare but less drop which means a more cramped hand position coming up from under the brifters like we do.

Carbon
https://whiskyparts.co/handlebars/no.9-6f-drop-bar#/

Alloy
https://whiskyparts.co/handlebars/no.7-6f-drop-bar#/