That one is 540 mm.

Looking forward to your reply

Thanks,

---

Sr. Salitre

you're saying that when you measure from the nose of the saddle to the point where the handlebar passes through the stem, the center of the handlebar, that measures 54cm? and, the nose of your saddle sits 1cm behind the BB in the vertical plane?

---

Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

Dan I'll play if you don't mind :) Thanks

height: 2040mm
wingspan: 2050mm

saddle height: 880mm (I think I could get a little higher, but feels ok. leg length from floor to crotch is about 970mm)
saddle setback: 110mm
saddle type: normal older fizik model
nose to hood trough: 753mm (if it is of importance, the handlebar is the oddly shaped 3T Aeronova 42mm)
saddle top to handlebar top: 135mm
nose to handlebar clamp: 600mm

I think this is a decent fit for me. I am looking at aero bikes. I would love to be able to fit on an Felt AR, but any other frame suggestion is welcome of course (if they are available in Europe) and am probably at the edge of the biggest framesizes most manufacturers make, but I could be wrong. Flexibility is pretty good, can lay my palms flat on the ground in front of me (not sure if this is helpful in any way)

You are mixing my measures with superbike's

My saddle setback is more like 5,6cm.

i see a pattern here. only giants and small people. are you guys all in the cast of game of thrones?

height: 2040mm
wingspan: 2050mm

saddle height: 880mm (I think I could get a little higher, but feels ok. leg length from floor to crotch is about 970mm)
saddle setback: 110mm
saddle type: normal older fizik model
nose to hood trough: 753mm (if it is of importance, the handlebar is the oddly shaped 3T Aeronova 42mm)
saddle top to handlebar top: 135mm
nose to handlebar clamp: 600mm

first i'm going to calculate the X and Y values from BB to handlebar clamp center. HX = saddle to h'bar clamp minus saddle setback, yes? so:

HX = 490mm
HY = 685mm

how did i get that second number? saddle height x cosine of the saddle declination (maybe 17°). which is about .95. so, that 880mm has a vertical component of about 836mm. subtract handlebar elevation drop, and subtract another 16mm (half of 31.8mm) to get to HY.

now, if you have a DIRECT measure of HY, that's even better. we can see if my math yielded the right result. but in the off chance my indirect calcs yielded a good number, then let's figure your bike options. but i have a question before we continue: do you want to keep this bar? here's why i ask.

HX = 490mm
HY = 685mm

let's figure what for a front end? 130mm stem? -6° pitch? 15mm total spacers + top cap/dust cover? that would be a nice front end. so, you plug this in and here's what we're looking for for stack and reach in a frame:

627mm
373mm

that's not nearly enough length (reach). here's a Cervelo R3 in 61cm:

630mm
405mm

we need another 30mm of length. where do we get that? the aeronova handlebar has a bar reach of 104mm. if we replace that with a Zipper super short and shallow (70mm reach) we need a frame now of

627mm
407mm

the R series starts to look pretty good, eh? here's the dirty little secret of handlebar geometry: when you start to give pro tour teams the choice of geometry, year-1 about a quarter of the riders choose short reach. by year-2 the entire team, every rider, every size, has opted for short reach. the aeronova is a paradigm of the past, unless you need it. i had a shop owner in here for a bike fit workshop last week, saddle height 860mm, but he needed the opposite. he had a HX of something like 530mm or 540mm. we couldn't find bikes long enough. so we fit him on a sampson road bar that has a reach of 110mm. but that's not what you need. you need to "find" length, and not because your position is bad. 753mm of nose to trough is about right. okay, maybe a little short of anything, but not overly short. it's in the ballpark. the problem we have is that handlebar reach of the aeronova.

here's a cannondale supersix in 63cm

620mm
399mm

so, we need it to be a little taller (add a 5mm spacer) and a little longer. in this case, okay, maybe you need a h'bar with 80mm of reach instead of 70mm. i'll bet you never really thought of handlebar reach as an active component of bike fit, but obviously in my view it is.

so is stem length and pitch. let's look at 2 trek sizes in its H2 geometry:

62cm: 634mm 398mm
64cm: 654mm 401mm

with a slightly longer reach bar (80mm) or 140mm stem, that 62mm is a nice fit if you slam the stem (take out 5mm or 10mm of the 15mm total of spacer + dust cover). that's what i'd do. but let's say you were offered a screaming deal on the 64cm on the dealer's floor. here's what i'd do:

if we take an HX of 524mm (which we would need with a bar reach of 70mm), and an HY of 685, we keep that 130mm front end, 15mm spacers, but instead of the -6° stem we slot in a stem parallel to the ground (-17°). with that flatter front end we make room for more frame to fill up underneath. we are now looking for a frame with a stack of 652mm and a reach of 404mm. that frame will fit fine.

see how this works? now, this all depends on whether my HY calculation turned out correct for you. but if so, really, these are easy problems, and you know exactly what to look for in a replacement bike, but that's IF your position is good. this process described will faithfully determine, with precision, what complete bike solution works for the position you present to it.

---

Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

oh, yeah, sorry about that. i couldn't make any sense of it. now i know why. give me awhile on this.

---

Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

2 more questions and the correct answer to your question is no, this won't have any effect on your tri bike choice. but i have an asterisk to this, which i hesitate to mention, but if you remind me when we're all done maybe i'll mention it anyway.

my 2 questions: do you know what handlebar you're riding? i ask because, like the last analysis i did in this thread, you have a big value for the difference between saddle nose to handlebar clamp and saddle nose to hood trough. this suggests a pretty long reach handlebar. you measure bar reach as the horizontal distance between the center of the bar's top and the center of the bar at its most forward protrusion.

second question. you have a small handlebar drop from the saddle considering your height and saddle height. why do you think that is?

---

Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

So no bikes for me?

Haha good one Dan! Maybe the giants and midgets just need the most help with fits? Luckily I am a little lighter than Hodor!

Anyway, thank you very much for your detailed response! And you openend my eyes to what an influence handlebars can have, you are right, I had no idea of the influence they can have. I am definitely not married to it, but I chose it as it had an aero profile with internal cable routing and had room for clamping aero bars which was a must for me. On a new bike I would definitely favor a well fitting bar over an aero profiled bar, if these two cannot be combined (if I am correct, Zipp bars do not allow aerobars, so that leaves ENVE) I guess stem length could also take up some of the reach though right? Right now I'm on a 120mm -6deg stem. Your enumeration of HY and HX makes alot of sense, and I can now adjudicate reach and stack on bikes better. I had always expected that I did not have alot of reach compared to my height and this confirms it. Just one question regarding HX. You determine the HY value by taking the cosine since the saddle height is at an angle. But then for HX you simply subtract the saddle setback from the nose to handlebar clamp measurement, which is also a measurement at an angle, correct? Just making sure all bases are covered there.

the problem with you and everyone who has commented to your post is that you are walking in this world with slowman and his magic floating inside your heads. in fact, that includes all of ST. we are about .0000000000000007869% of the world's population. surely even lesser.

the problem with the rest of the world not included in my first statement is --- well they have no idea what the hell is that magic floating in our heads.

there is no solution if those two groups communicate.

andrew

My replies to your questions:

1- reading your first one I realized I maybe measured nose to hood wrong. I went to the top of the hood, instead of the end of the lower surface where I rest my hand. Anyway, that is 25mm less(670 nose to hood) I am using the stock handlebar for my Felt. 44 cm wide, 120 mm drop and 7 cm reach.
2- this can be because of the slipped disc in my lower back I mentioned in an earlier post.

And no, you will not walk away without me reminding you about the asterisk on tri bikes, it is a main concern to me, mainly because of 2 :)

---

Sr. Salitre

"So no bikes for me?"

just went running. now going swimming. i'll get to these eventually, but at some point i'm going to ask some of you smarty pantses to see what i keep doing for each of you (same process) and take this process out for a spin yourselves, here on this thread, one of you attempting to help the other.

---

Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

"But then for HX you simply subtract the saddle setback from the nose to handlebar clamp measurement, which is also a measurement at an angle, correct?"

yes, but that's a pretty small angle. so i'm not that worried about it.

your next road handlebar might be a profile design cobra. short reach, aero road bar.

---

Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

I was just being a smartxss :)

I'll second this. I know off hand of at least 3-4 high end speced shops who can cater to the whole gambit. The shop I use has a great mechanic who I've yet to get a "dazed and confused" look on his face when I'm being highly specific. I bounce ideas off him about everything from cables (Yokozuna, Dura-Ace, Nocon) to brake pads (Cryo-Blue Power, Salmon Swiss Stop, etc) and even things like K-Edge combo mount (GoPro/Garmin) and he always knows what I'm talking about. I think he's the rare cycling junkie who wrenches very well and loves his job. He's always asking when out next project is going to happen. I also regularly get him to tune things for me prior to a race and they don't charge me. I get "shop pro discount" which is basically just a customer appreciation discount of 10% on everything I buy. It's not alot but adds up!

---

------
"Train so you have no regrets @ the finish line"

In my second post I mentioned that the actual nose of seat to hood trough distance was 680mm but I rarely ride in the hoods. Typically I grab the top curved portion of the bars which is 635mm and didn't want another fit like I had so I entered the distance I normally ride with as something I can tolerate. This might be why you say my fit coordinates are suspect and I hope the actual measurement makes more sense to you.

I don't sit back very far on the saddle, but not on the nose rails either. Its more in the middle of the seat, but slightly forward. My seat is actually mounted as far forward as possible on the stock Felt carbon setback seat post.

Gorilla arms? I never thought of myself having long arms. I think my wingspan measurement is unusually long compared to my height due to my wide shoulders and not so much may arm length.

I think you did nail it though with the EXACT WRONG bike for me comment. I've always felt stretch way out in the hoods and the fact that the F series is one of the longest and lowest bikes out there only verifies my feeling of my fit.

So if you insert the actual seat nose to hood trough distance of 680mm, does that do anything to the stack and reach coordinates you recommend for me? I'm currently looking at a BMC GF01/02 (ironically this bike's name is the same as what you called my fit riding geometry) and with the stack of 565mm and a reach of 377mm that you calculate, a BMC GF01 54mm is also the right bike for me with a stack of 563mm and a reach of 375mm.

What would I need to do if I find a 51cm BMC GF01 that has a stack of 546mm and a reach of 365mm? I'm assuming I would need to raise my bars up 20mm and change to a stem that is 10mm longer or have a more aggressive fit and leave the stack alone but still lengthen the stem 10mm.

BTW, thanks for doing this, I really appreciate it.

one question, before i dive into this. your saddle nose, on your ROAD bike, is 2cm in front of the BB?

---

Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

Yes, I've tried putting it behind the BB but it always feels like I'm pushing really far forward on the down stroke.

I also sit near the back of the saddle (fizik arione)

jaretj

saddle height: 609mm
saddle setback: +19mm
saddle type: Standard (fizik arione road)
nose to hood trough: 590.5mm
saddle top to handlebar top, 76mm

Please find me a bike small enough

Overall height 1619mm
Wingspan 1664mm

same as with the other analyses, i'm looking for the following, and here's what i calculate, more or less:

HY: 518
HX: 470

the typical problem with shorter riders is that you can't get the cockpit short enough. that's not your problem. your bars are out there quite far and i think that's due to 2 things: 1) you have long arms; 2) you have your saddle so far forward (even if you sit near the back of the saddle).

but what you do have is a height issue. with only a 61cm saddle height, but with a lot of handlebar drop for that height (7.6cm) you need a low, low, low bike.

so, we have one rider who's got a Felt F series further up in this thread and it's exactly wrong for him. this geometry is exactly right for you, and i know this before i even do the calcs.

because that 518mm HY is so low, i need to assume you're going to have a very flat front end, with the smallest amount of elevation above the frame possible. i'll also err on the longish side on stems. i'll go 100mm, only a 5mm headset dust cover, no spacers, and a -17° stem.

with that front end we're looking for a bike that has the following:

stack: 494mm
reach: 377mm

scott foil 47: 503/371
scott foil 49: 509/379

one of these fits you better lengthwise, the other heightwise. i guess i would err on the 47, because it's a little easier to mess around with the length, but you have a bike frame height dilemma created by the fact you probably want to stick with 700c wheels.

there are lots of bikes like this. felt's 48cm F series is 500/370. in these cases where you have this geometry, it's a slight bit taller than perfect, and a slight bit shorter, you fix it by going to a 110mm stem, or a handlebar with a 1cm longer reach than you're now riding, or you deal with a cockpit a few cms shorter, or you scoot your saddle back 5mm or 6mm (i think it's too far forward anyway).

the problem i'm having is trying to figure out how your cannondale can get as low as you have those bars. maybe i'm just not familiar with the geometry of that bike.

---

Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

Realize it's a mtb part (Syntace has one too--Flatforce?) but surefire way to reduce stack at the handlebar (even with short stems): http://www.fullspeedahead.com/.../non-series-stem-20/

---

The question of who is right and who is wrong has seemed to me always too small to be worth a moment's thought, while the question of what is right and what is wrong has seemed all-important.

-Albert J. Nock

I want to understand this trend of pro tour riders loving short reach bars. The way I picture it is you have a position you like and you put a short reach set of bars on, then you need to change to a longer stem in order to keep the hood trough hand position the same. I would propose that this is the most important position since the most time is spent in this position. Therefore switching from a standard reach bar to a short reach bar would have the effect of lengthening the position on the bar tops. Maybe the pro jocks want this because it can make their climbing position more aerodynamic? But for most people I would think that a shorter reach to the bar tops would be more comfortable for climbing. So I guess what I really want to know is: should we all be considering short reach bars because we all want to be pro?

You're missing an angular correction on the setback. This will lead to always calculating Hx a bit long.


Sl70 doesn't have much room in the drops though. If short reach required for big hands Deda RHM is a bit roomier and is 75mm reach.
Before I go further I submit that his saddle is on the high side. And Reach is a bit short for someone with a long torso.
Correcting the current hx,hy of 483,693 for an RHM shaped bar yields 512,693




But since the OP is looking at aero bikes we'll tweak the filters





R3 MKIII is a semi aero frame. But as the "Also Consider" field at the bottom shows - it shares geometry with a number of other Cervelos, including the 1st Generation S5. S3 not in there yet but shares the geometry. As shown by the Bar X and Bar Y fields - this setup within 2mm of target (search was done with 5mm tolerance).

The Cannondale is a 650 bike
Specifically it's a 2002 CAAD5 44cm. I found the frame on Ebay as New Old Stock.
Link to my geometry notes, it's the second bike from the left.
https://docs.google.com/...64_V7X-i0/edit#gid=0

I'm using a 110mm -17° stem on it right now
Very small headset cap below the stem.

I actually have a Felt F5 48 with 700C wheels, 110 -17° stem. I picked that bike because of the low stack and good front end geometry. I like the bike but there are two fit problems with it for me.
1. I cannot get the bars low enough to get my hip angle down nearer 100° unless I'm on the drops
2. If I do put the bars low enough with a -30 stem, the drops are below the top of the front tire which is not UCI legal and I cannot use that bike for draft legal events.

Handling wise it rides well, I like the way it turns but it's not nearly as nimble as my old Trek 2200 and Cannondale CAAD5. I spent last year riding it near home on flat roads as well as up and down some Mountains in Georgia and smaller foothills in Southern Ohio.

The bars I'm using are Bontrager Race VR-S 38cm. They are some of the shallowest drop bars I could find. I actually have the same bar on the Cannondale.

I think the only way to put me on 700C wheels is to have a bike with a higher BB so the saddle can be higher relative to the bars. I see that trend in some of the womens 29er mountain bikes, specifically the Trek Superfly.

Perhaps I could learn to bend my elbows more and conform to the bike since women like Barbra Riveros and Ai Ueda have bikes that work for them.

I really don't think there will be any new high end 650 road bikes introduced to the market any time soon so that option is not available.

Thanks for all of your help

jaretj

We have some good ones here in Vancouver, though I suspect it's only the fitters that even know the terms Stack and Reach.

I recall when I first got into cycling, walked into a real messy shop near my house as I knew nothing at all about cycling, the guy behind the counter looks at me and says, oh, you're a 56. No measurements, no testing. I'm actually on a 54. Needless to say, no bikes were purchased there.

It gets interesting when the only bike fitter you will use moves from your preferred store to another one.

Today, having purchased over 10 bikes in the past 7 years, my choice of an LBS is simple. Who's the fitter and who are the mechanics, I could care less who the salespeople are.

---

Cervelo R3 and Cannondale Synapse, Argon18 Electron Track Bike

it sounds like my interpretation of your issues, and your own interpretation of and solution for your issues, pretty well match.

---

Dan Empfield
aka Slowman