That's a lot of bar swaps...lol. I'm glad you found one you like. I went through a few different setups on my Appaloosa too. Started with the Chocomoose bars and thought those came back a little too much for me on this bike. Then I went to the regular Bullmoose bar which was too short of a reach for me but I did use that setup for a season. That bar is living on my Frank Jones Sr single speed now. Then I tried a Nitto Noodle which I really didn't like on this bike and since then I've sworn off all drop bars. I'm just getting too old for that bending over stuff. I ended up going with the tried and true Albatross bar with a decently longish Nitto stem. I only have one shifter on the bar setup and it's an XT index thing I took off a mountain bike and I use a pair of Paul Component brake levers with some slip on rubber grips. The setup does everything well enough that I don't plan on changing it anytime soon. Front ring is changed by hand now. Eventually I will stick a friction shifting setup on the bike using some Paul Thumbies or something.
I guess changing around setups is part of the fun for me. On Sunday, January 30, 2022 at 11:47:37 PM UTC-6 Erik wrote: > As of last night, I have officially swapped the bars and stem on my 2017 > Appaloosa...a lot. I've never been like this with other bikes, but for > some reason I get restless with my Riv set-ups and keep messing around with > new configurations every few months. In five years, I've gone through the > following: > > - Choco-norm (original build from Riv) > - Original moustache (from an old Bridgestone build) > - Bullmoose > - Bosco Bullmoose (because I rode Grant's Appaloosa with these bars > and loved them) > - Albatross (because they are lovely and feel good) > - Spank Flare (because I wanted to try drops when I switched the > Appaloosa from primarily road to off-road use. First drops for me since > 1991 on my RB-2) > - Jones H-Loop (these stayed on for almost a year! I only took them > off to move them to my Atlantis) > - Albatross again > - Billie (wanted a longer grip area than I had on the albatross) > > And now a Choco-moose (because I rode by headquarters in Walnut Creek > yesterday and impulsively bought them after looking a Blue Lug customer > builds the night before) > > It's taken a LOT of Newbaums to make all these swaps! I took the bike out > for a long-ish ride on the new bars today with lots of climbing and > descents and some good flats. The hand positions were really comfortable > and the height of the grips and other positions were perfect. And they are > stout! The Billie's were good, but I found them to be too flexible for me. > I'm a bigger guy and on a 110 Nitto stem there was just too much movement > when I was on the grips. > > Anyway, each of the set-ups had things I loved and things I didn't love. > The Albatross bars were great when I was running bar-end shifters, but the > hand space felt too crowded when I swapped out to inboard Silver 2 > shifters. But they were beautiful and really comfortable with the bar end > shifters. The Spank drops were fantastic with a 30mm Discord stem, but I > swapped them out after a bad accident last year that broke my hand (another > rider ran into me head on when my hand was on the hood. It took the full > force of the impact) and I need a flatter bar during the rehab process and > I wanted a hand position that was more protected. The Jones bar was perfect > for that purpose. The Bosco Bullmoose bars were great when I was commuting > on the bike everyday before the pandemic, but I didn't like the bulkiness > for other types of riding. And on and on. > > I think I've got a good set up now and I'm hoping I leave it alone for a > while, but I'm wondering if it took other folks as much experimenting to > get the right results with bar / stem combos on their bikes. Or is this > just part of the fun? Do you have any set ups that you've stayed with for > long periods of time? > > I'd love to hear other's stories about restless swapping of parts! [image: > Appa_007.jpg] > [image: Appa_233.jpg] > [image: Appa_267.jpg] > [image: Appa_302.jpg] > > > -- 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 view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/rbw-owners-bunch/0ce382eb-ec1f-48fc-978a-62f18c84ae3dn%40googlegroups.com.
