When I put my commuter bike together with an albastache bar, I found when I used it as intended, with road brake levers mounted on the curves, that I had to have the bars quite high relative to the seat or else I'd feel like I was going to take a nose dive over the bars while braking. I ended up not liking the normal hooded drop bar brake setup, and I am using reverse brake levers with the bars mounted around saddle height. The curves are a little above saddle height, the grips slightly below - a little tilt makes everything feel better. To get the bars up this high I'm using a technomic stem. As far as length is concerned, really it's just a matter of what's comfortable for your torso and arm length. Because I spend most of my time holding the grips at the ends of the bar and because I have a very long torso and fairly long arms, I use a very long (120mm?) stem. The end result is extremely comfortable, though not very rigid. Hit a bad bump and the whole assembly wobbles until I can get it back under control, but part of that is the flexible vintage steel frame as well.
Photo of the setup: http://cl.ly/053y3W2c3T1r /Jeremy On Saturday, September 23, 2017 at 7:30:26 AM UTC-7, John Casteen wrote: > > I bought a used Joe Appaloosa that had been purchased complete and tricked > out really beautifully by its first owner-- many thoughtful choices about > gear and parts to customize and/or upgrade from the Rivendell build. Among > them is an Albastache bar, which is new to me; it's great. The bike fits > me perfectly except for the fact that the stem, a Nitto 7 cm Chrystem, has > too little height to raise the bars where I think they should be, which is > maybe an inch above the saddle. I end up with a bit more weight on my arms > and hands than I'd like; the stem, maxed out, sits about an inch below the > nose of the saddle. I think it's going to take a different stem to jack up > the bars, but before diving into that, two questions: first, does anyone > have advice about stem lengths that generally work for these bars, and > second, am I seeing this right? Do other Albastache riders generally run > the stem height just at or above seat height, where I'm sort of aiming to > put it? > > Thanks in advance for any wisdom you can pass along-- > > John > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to rbw-owners-bunch+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to rbw-owners-bunch@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/rbw-owners-bunch. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
