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question about saddle to handlebar length

1K views 7 replies 4 participants last post by  Bttocs 
#1 ·
sorry I wrote so much.

hello, I currently have a medium(18") guardian 2.0. it is the first time I have measured myself and tried to buy the right size frame accordingly. my dillemma is this. my previous bike was a diamonback overdrive size large(20") to me that bike felt great. it was really comfortable and I felt like I could ride it all day. so when I decided it was time to upgrade to a new bike I figured I would measure myself and buy the "perfect fitting" bike so I would not only be comfortable, but have a decent quality bike that would make me want to just keep riding, kind of like my overdrive made me feel. so after measuring myself multiple times and asking multiples of different people the general consensus was that a medium(18") guardian was the right size for me. right from day one of riding it I always felt cramped on it. while riding I felt like I always wanted to twist the bars toward the front of the bike to try to gain more room(if that makes any sense to you guys) I tried a 120mm stem and I am running NS Bikes Evidence bars, those of you that are familiar with those bars know they have little back sweep or "backslap" as it states on the nsbikes website. so that being said I was messing around with my bike recently and I had this short 40mm stem laying around, I always liked the way bikes looked/handled with short stems and wide bars, so just to agrivate myself I changed out the 120mm stem for the 40mm stem and took my bike for a short ride(about 1.5miles). with the short stem, the bike actually felt better. I was alot less prone to feel like I wanted to twist the bars in an attempt to give myself more room. I was dumbfounded by this, it made absolutely no sense to me. does this make any sense to anyone else? can anyone shed a little light on the subject? any help/info would be greatly appreciated. thanks
JJ
 
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#3 ·
I can't give you a definitive answer, but I have been playing around a lot with stems and bars to get my seeker to fit properly. I am on a 22" frame. I use a 40mm stem and 750mm bars and it feels good. My guess is that stems always have angles along with lenght, and you bars moved up or down somewhat and is a factor. Recenlty I tried moving my seat all the forward and then all the way back. Same bars and stem. With the seat forward I had the same feeling you describe of wanting more room. All the way back felt OK, buy I couldn't keep the front end down on steep hills. Turns out a middle saddle position solves all the issues and feels good.

My shorter stem made the steering feel much better, maybe that is a contributor as well. Try an online stem calculator to see where your handle bars actually moved to.
 
#4 ·
Thanks for the good info. I appreciate it.

I can't give you a definitive answer, but I have been playing around a lot with stems and bars to get my seeker to fit properly. I am on a 22" frame. I use a 40mm stem and 750mm bars and it feels good. My guess is that stems always have angles along with lenght, and you bars moved up or down somewhat and is a factor. Recenlty I tried moving my seat all the forward and then all the way back. Same bars and stem. With the seat forward I had the same feeling you describe of wanting more room. All the way back felt OK, buy I couldn't keep the front end down on steep hills. Turns out a middle saddle position solves all the issues and feels good.

My shorter stem made the steering feel much better, maybe that is a contributor as well. Try an online stem calculator to see where your handle bars actually moved to.
 
#8 ·
I think I understand why your 40mm stem feels much better, even though it seems to be going in the wrong direction. Basically your arms swing an arc from your shoulder. If you hold your arms out to where you would like your bars to be, and then continue to lower them, they will drop and move in toward your body. The new stem dropped the bars some and moved them in, which put them closer to your ideal arm position as it swings through its arc. Seems to make sense to me, but just my opinion.
 
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