Eddie, for what it's worth: when I bought an old Atlantis (that has the much more compact size and geometry than current Atlantis models) it had a Noodle drop bar on a medium length stem — a pretty standard Rivendell build. I couldn't ride it for more than a few miles without experiencing terrible pain in my wrists, neck, and shoulders due to an old injury. Importantly, it felt extremely twitchy to me, maybe because I couldn't ever get quite comfortable enough.
I replaced the Noodle with an Albatross using the same stem, and it was a world of difference. The twitchiness was gone — maybe because I was no longer in pain and uncomfortable? The bike suddenly felt super stable. I even noticed that the toe clip overlap that annoyed me so much when riding the Noodle was also gone, a nonissue, with the Albatross. The takeaway for me is that it's one thing to discuss how stem length and type of handlebar affect steering and handling hypothetically, in the abstract. But it is quite another to assess how stem length and type of handlebar affect steering and feel for a particular body actually riding a particular bike. There are so many idiosyncrasies and variables in each of us that what might be common sense and obvious for one body just doesn't work for another, no matter what the putative rules and accepted wisdom about it might be. Each of us has our own goals and purpose for riding, which also play into feel. Jim On Monday, September 11, 2023 at 10:09:02 AM UTC-4 Ted Durant wrote: > On Sunday, September 10, 2023 at 4:59:17 PM UTC-4 eddietheflay wrote: > > My current bike has Billie bars installed on a very tall adjustable stem. > Effective top tube on this bike is 59.5cm. Reach to both the rear portion > at the grips and front portion at the curves seems quite comfortable. But > when steering from the grips things seem really twitchy. Wondering if a > shorter top-tubed bike with a longer stem would make things more steady? > > > My experience with a Quickbeam was similar - upright bars (Albatross) and > using the ends of the bars made for a very quick, "twitchy", light steering > feel. I attribute this to two factors. The first, and IMO more important > one, is that my position on the bike was far more upright, resulting in > much less weight on the front wheel. The second is that my hands were much > farther from the steering axis. > > So, if a shorter top-tube and longer stem results in a) your position > being the same, and b) moving your hands closer to the steering axis (which > it would if on your current setup your hands at the ends of the bar are > behind the steering axis) then I'd expect a slight reduction in > twitchiness. I'd expect it to be maybe imperceptible, though, because the > change in hand distance to steering axis will be tiny, as the bigger factor > in that regard is the handlebar width. > > Hand distance from the steering axis does two things. First, it gives more > leverage, so less effort is required to put an equal amount of force into > turning the fork or (what's really important) changing the angle of the > bike relative to the ground (or resisting other forces trying to change the > angle to the ground). Second, the flip side of that, for a given amount of > fork rotation (or body/bike/ground angle changes) your hands have to move a > greater distance. It's worth noting, only because some things I've seen > written seem confused on this issue, that if you change the stem length and > also change the bars, such that your hands wind up in the same place > relative to the steering axis, you will have zero change on steering feel. > You can put a 1000mm stem on there and super long backward reaching bars > and your leverage won't have changed. The amount of flex in that system > will likely have changed though, and that could impact "feel" in other ways. > > Ted Durant > Milwaukee WI USA > -- 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/5ab4bb82-ae5e-4899-b673-d64af1c3d988n%40googlegroups.com.
