What is your preference for stems. Does it matter, or do you choose your bar/stem on the function outside the clamp diameter?
What about BMC, Look, and other Integrated front end options, how does their choice in stem clamp diameter affect your attraction to those brands and features?
I really like the 31.8mm diameter on my road bike, but feel like 26.0 for the standard base bar makes more sense for TT/Tri application. Am I fighting a losing battle? Will 26.0 go the way of 1" head tubes and threaded forks?
I use 26.0 on all of my bikes, and never felt any need to change. If I were a pure sprinter it may be a little different, but I figure if Lance used a 26.0mm bars & stem until the team switched to Bontrager, its good enough for me.
Sadly, 26.0 is going the way of the dodo bird, however.
I choose 26 for my road bars as I like the classic drop bar and most of them are in 26. I have F99 on my road and FS mtb bikes and ITM Millenium on the KAlibur. Pretty certain that is a 26 too as it holds a HED aerobar.
I will be going for an oversized stem on my hardtail but only because I want a Hope stem on USE bar to meet my Brit Bike brief.
I think the 26.0 stem is heading the way of the square BB/crank hole, and the standard headset. They will be around for a while, have no reason to be replaced, but will fade away eventually.
26.0 needs to go away, and the faster the better. With many mountain bikes now moving to 31.8, the faster we can get everything using the same bar size standard, the better life will be.
The shop I work out of has (literally) hundreds of stems in stock - yet I can never find the one I need, because of all the different standards. If all goes well, in a couple of years there will be no such thing as a MT.Bike stem, or a road bike stem - just a stem, period. Wouldn’t that be great?
If Tri-bike manufacturers try to hold to the 26.0 standard, the sheer pain in the ass factor is going to cost them market share when the local LBS stops carrying a wide variety of 26.0 stems.
This is already happening in our shop - 26.0 is a hassle. Because most of our floor stock is 31.8, we are stocking more 31.8 stems and bars than 26.0. If a bike salesperson knows he is going to have to swap stems to make a bike sale, he is more likely to sell the 31.8 standard bike, because we are more likely to have the stem we need in stock.
Frankly, I could care less about the performance advantages or disadvantages of handlebar size; it’s all about shelf space. The fewer skews in the shop, the better - and if a bike manufacturer doesn’t understand this, at a visceral level - they are already behind the eight ball.
SO, no you aren’t fighting a losing battle - you are fighting a rear-guard action in a battle that is already over.
No way the bike world would standardize something as simple as handlebar diameters. I will bet within 3 years there will be another big size like 32.4 or something to confuse the hell out of us and make things hard on the retailers. Lets see Campy square taper, square taper, isis, octalink, outside oversize bearings. 102 107 109 111 125 widths italian, french, and english threads. What else can we come up with Hmmmmm? What do you think the chances of a industrial standard lasting more than 5 years?
90% plus of the road bikes in our store are 31.8, and about half of the mountain bikes - that’s as close as the bike industry has ever gotten to a standard - so for chrissakes, lets support it…
Any new bikes should be 31.8mm only. It would be very nice for the bike industry to actually have something standardized. So far, about the only standards out there are rear derailleur threading, water bottle mount spacing, seat rail width, and front axle width.
For someone like me who already has everything they need (as far as bikes go) there is no compelling reason to switch.
I can probably get used to the 31.8 stems. It’s the handlebars I have a problem with. They have to keep the 31.8 diameter section of the bar wide enough to accomodate clip-on aero bars. It’s rather silly for companies like Felt to sell entry level bikes that you can’t properly put an aero bar on, when that’s what a lot of the buyers want to do. When you’re selling a bike to a price sensitive, novice triathlete, it’s rather awkward when they ask how much to put a basic aero bar on and you tell them it’s not quite that simple.
Seriously, those tenths of millimeters are annoying. I remember 25.8, 26.0 and some other weird size (just for a manufacturer to say they can make their own standard) at the same time.
I have no problem with going with one standard size.
Just another attempt for the bike industry to try and create a need for something new that’s makes no difference from a performance point of view. 31.8 and integrated headsets offer nothing over what they replaced, but they’ll be the new standard.
I just wish someone would make a 31.8 adjustable stem if it is the new “standard”…
That being said, I do think 31.8 for TT bars causes a minor increase in frontal area, for no real reason. I’d be interested to see if you could windtunnel test the same bar with a 31.8 stem and a 26.0 stem and see if there was any difference.
Personally, though, I don’t really care. I think 26 is better for TT because I think it is easier to taper to a super thin wing, etc.
we should all be standard with what mountain bikes use? I fail to see that logic. screw mountain bikes. I use a 26.0 stoker bar so I can put my clip ons as wide as I want to . when I had the 31.8 clamp 3TTT bars on my road bike, I couldn’t put the shorty clip-ons on . the 31.8 section was too narrow, and then it became less than 26.0 very quickly.
really this whole issue is a pain in the ass. there’s nothing wrong with 26.0. what’s the point of changing it? so there’s less ‘SKUs’ in a bike shop? Like your customers care about that. as if…
"What about your confidence in 31.8 → 26.0 reducing shims?
-SD "
Well, Aero bar shims aren’t great, but like anything, if they are done well, they are OK. We are way more likely to stock an aero bar that will fit 26.0 with a shim than a bar that will fit 26.0 0nly. It really comes down to convenience. In this age of e-commerce, a brick and mortar store largely writes off special order sales, so it is much more important to be able to fill a wide variety of spec with stock on hand than it was when customers were willing to wait for the next Quality order. If a salesperson can put a product in someones hands, right when they want it, they will buy it. If they have to wait, they will probably mail order it cheaper. If one bar can be stocked that will fit 2 bar diameters, it is going to get put in more hands.
Base bar reducing shims are another story - they seem really hard to do well. I’m not sold on those at all.
Also, SD - if you guys are going to get into the aftermarket, for chrissakes, get the POP side right. Profile is absolutely killing Vision, Syntace - heck, everybody- in our store, based 100% on the packaging. They have it nailed.
The bar designs are an issue. Tri bike manufacturers need to stop speccing bars that are incompatible with clip ons on their road bikes, and tell the component manufacturers why. Make this spec a selling point in your line.
Some other notes -
I love the whining about “yet another standard…” Sweet. 26.0 was the de-facto standard for about 5 years, after Cinelli became part of Groupo. Before that it was 26.0, 25.8 - all over the map - And another standard entirely for Mtn. Bikes. People have really short memories.
Along these lines, when is it going to be OK to stop talking about the apocalyptic evil of internal headsets? The Chris King led propaganda/scare tactics have well and truly proven to be total BS, as evidenced by the thousands of bikes that are not having problems, issues, or spontaneously combusting as one might have been mistaken for expecting, if they had believed all the press put out by manufacturers who stand to lose lots of money when forced to compete with a much cheaper, functionally identical (if not superior) product?
I am willing to bet that there is a slight aero advantage to 26.0 bars. Who cares. There’s a *definite,*substantial aero advantage to any number of things that just aren’t commercially viable. I might even own/use those things - but who is going to sell them if they don’t make money? 26.0 is going to fall out of favor at an accellerated rate as it stops being compatible with any of the bikes that a dealer sells. That day is in the very near future. If Tri manufacturers try to hold out, that is only going to insure that nothing will fit on tri bikes without shims, and that your customer will be pissed off when he can’t find a stem to fit his new bike.
That has been changed. At the time of the design of that bar, accessories like top mount brake levers, computers, lights, etc were not available in the oversize diameter so we chose to accomodate them. Profile, Ritchey, and Deda aerobars could be mounted to our “narrow bulge” bars. We’ve now widened the 31.8mm section from the industry change in aftermarket selection and most of our 2006 models and all of the 2007 models will accomadate 31.8mm clamp on aerobars.
It is simple to put a aerobar on the older design narrow bulge bar. You’ll need a 26.0 mm clamp with an offset clamp. (not FSA or Vision)