You can't image it *with the frame designs you've been riding *Patrick. Of course you hate swept back bars on your bikes, of course you consider that "sit up and beg". The frame reach is too darn short of reach for those bars. That square pegs don't fit into a round holes is obvious, they simply don't match.
A frame with a much longer reach is where they function best, and even then, the design of the frame's handling will effect how those bars feel in all riding conditions. I have 2 distinctly different handling bikes, the Bombadil and a Franklin custom(sport/touring), both with long reaches, tall stack heights, 13cm stems and 56cm Alba bars set up the same way. I mostly ride at say a 45-65 degree angle. With drop bars on the Franklin it was much less than that. The Bomba up/down hill can feel like turning a wheelbarrow, there is definite resistance to steering inputs wherever my hands are on the bar fore-aft.... while the Franklin feels completely neutral everywhere-all-the-time meaning the bike isn't offering much resistance to steering inputs. It's free and easy, slow/fast/up/downhill, I find this most intuitive. Same bar and stem, similar frame reach, two very different experiences. I ride both all the time. Different bikes for different moods. I like Dave Moulton's depiction of a vertical pencil on a table. Turning left and right is very easy. Now tilt it back some and try steering left and right. The more tilt, the more resistant it feels to turning inputs, like a wheelbarrow. The Bomba up until the last Clem/Hillybike designs, had the the longest reach of any Riv design per given frame size. It was the only Riv frame that would work for me with swept back bars because I know how much frame reach I prefer. I can see why people say they disliked the Alba, or swept bars in general. On a frame with not enough reach you can/may end up with too much weight/pressure on your hands and feel too upright, especially when you limit yourself to the bar ends. Add that with the design of the steering and a customers intangible expectations, and you have all sorts of opinions expressed. So having swept back bars with plenty of reach is a totally different experience from "sit up and beg". Yeah ... you're begging for a better fitting bike... more frame reach please ! I remember riding English 3-speeds back in the day, gawd was that awful. Waaaay too short of reach , straight up riding and your knees almost hitting the bars. Quite unstable. How anyone put up/puts up with that is beyond me ! Ahahahahahaaaaaa !!!! To each their own. > -- 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 [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/rbw-owners-bunch/513aa0d1-4cda-4458-8eee-2b341b4047dbo%40googlegroups.com.
