Techie Tuesday: R&R Handlebars

The old ones (Performance Bike Shop Forte') broke under the Syntace C3 aerobar clamps. Hope the new ones (Ritchey SuperLogic Evo Carbon) won't. PBS stood by their Satisfaction Guarantee, so aside from all the labor, only a $60 hit to my pocketbook. Nothing wrong with the Forte' bars for normal use, but not up to aerobars.


PBS's house brand bars Forte was bucking under the aerobar clamps



Brake cables run in the bar's cable hides, and shifter cables run along backside of bar. Each cable was trial fitted, taped into place using 3M electrical tape, and then function tested before any bar tape was applied.



L and R brake cable swapped so front brake and 10-gears are in my right hand. Shifter cables also swapped and then crossed under the downtube. This gives the rear deraulleur cable a straight path from headtube to end of chainstay.



MagicShine mount attaches along side of the stem. Yeah, there's a LOT going on here. Old bars had cables threaded through them, so every last cable had to be unthreaded. The brakes and drivetrain then had to be readjusted after installation. What a massive PITA.

Another angle

Pretty clean. The cables are trimmed to within a mm of their lives. I doubt I can flip the stem without recabling at this point, but I loathe messy cabling and the drag it creates. MagicShine is ~ right in front of toptube and  battery pack strapped to top of toptube.

Clean cockpit. Slip the Garmin into it's mount and we're wheels-up in 30 seconds.

Not wanting to take any chances on the new bars, I used the same trick on the aeorbars I used on my perpetually sliding Easton seatpost - I shimmed the clamps with 1500 Wet-or-Dry sandpaper, turning the grit side to the main bars. This dramatically reduces the amount of clamping pressure needed to keep the aerobars from moving. I especially like that this also comprises a compressible shim, so the take-up on the tightening is more gradual, and easier to judge.

The spray bottle hanging off the left handlebar is to keep the bike from tipping over when standing straight up so I can even up the aerobars. Nice trick. When you get aerobars where you want them,  roll the bike into a doorway, place a level across the ends, and mark their height. No matter what happens with handlebars and stems, it makes a great starting point for adjusting the aerobars.

I rode the bike up to Beals Point a couple of nights ago, and am very happy with the bars. The aren't noodley like the Forte, but are still soaking up a lot of road chop. The reach is perfect, but the drop is a lot less, and I need to push the drops forward and out to get more room in the cockpit. With aerobars, you seldom need deep drops, but a middle position is nice for climbing into a wind in a position where you can still breathe well.

C3 Aerobars Plus MagicShine

After a year of doing without, and making some very good rationalizations (like why do I need to ride at night, when I have all day to ride?), I finally pulled the trigger and ordered a MagicShine 900 lumen light with a 6Ah LION battery pack, helmet mount, and carbon fiber drop mount.


Planet Bike 1W Blaze and MagicShine 900

I decided to keep the Planet Bike Blazer 1W light on the bars until I'm sure the MagicShine is reliable, but as it turned out, having two is pretty useful anyway as the strobing Blazer marks me as a cyclist and not a motorcycle.

I also decided not to mount the light on my helmet, although that may change, I am still concerned about early reports that these lights were emitting so much radio frequency noise they were shutting down people's Garmins, and presumably, cooking their brains ala cell phones. I detected no problems with my Garmin, and it's mounted 5" away, but still being cautious.

(The evidence is very clear, although the cell phone mfgs are doing every last thing to suppress the studies, cell phones cause brain cancer when held against your head, so use a WIRED headset and don't end up a statistic. The last study I saw published came out of Scandinavia and was a 10yr study based on only a half-hour a day's use. That study showed a 6X increase in brain cancer ONLY on the side the user held the phone, and directly adjacent the ear.)

I wasn't sure if the drop mount, which clamps around the bar right next to the stem, has a 3" arm, and then a stub 1" round carbon tube about 2" long, would drop enough or be strong enough to hold the light in a stable way. It did, and I didn't even need to wrap the provided 3" rubber shim around the stub to get the light to mount firmly enough to prevent slippage.

Battery strapped on top of the top tube, resting on some foam shelf-liner. Nice cockpit view and the light isn't shining in my face.

I decided to just put the light right in front of the top tube, forward enough to not interfere with the cables with the handlebars turned in any direction. That turned out to be perfect. It stays cool, lights well, doesn't blind me with back-scatter, and seems about as aerodynamic a position as possible.

I could move it off to the right, as I am somewhat tempted to do, but as it is, the 6" of separation between the MagicShine and Blaze make the Blaze's strobe mode more visible. Otherwise it would just get lost in the flood of MagicShine light.

I went riding with a couple of friends from the Sacramento Bike Hikers Tuesday night, and they had their MagicShines helmet mounted so they could turn their heads and focus the light through turns and around riders ahead. Especially when I was in the middle, and offset 2ft to the right, this worked out very well.

My light provided constant illumination of the bike trail which allowed them to free-lance their helmet lights without losing sight of the trial's surface. Very nice for avoiding snakes. Counting 2 Blazes and 3 MagicShines we had over 3,000 lumens of white light ahead, and 7 tail lights behind mounted from mid-seatstay to helmet level. We were a flying Christmas Tree!

With the 3 of us riding together I was completely comfortable riding flat out - up to 25mph - with that amount of light. Riding home alone from the meetup site, the light was comfortable up to ~  20mph. Facing into streetlight going down a long hill I hit the brakes lightly to keep my speed down.

If I want to ride alone I will need more light to ride flat-out. The 4-LED MagicShine MS-872 Quad XP-G lighthead provides a perfect solution. It can be mounted on the drop stub, and my existing spot light moved to my helmet. With 1600 lumens it provides a full-width beam that lights the entire lane for at least 150ft - about 4 seconds at 25mph.

MagicShine MS-872 Quad XP-G Light employing 4 CREE LEDs

If you've studied the power consumption curves of LEDs you'll have noticed that as you push them harder and harder to get more light out of a single bulb, 2-3X as much power is dissipated as heat. Thus, one of the really great advantages of having 4 bulbs is that even on med-hi, it still puts out 900 lumens, and does so very efficiently. Good thing I got the big battery pack, as cranking out 2,500 lumens does take a toll on batteries, even LION batteries.

We had a lot of fun flying down the ARPT Tuesday night, and collected up a dozen or so riders who were riding with little or no light. By sharing the wealth of light, we collected a substantial paceline on the way from Sunrise to WBP, and at an average speed of 20.4mph.