With all of this talk about Marys, Midges, H-bar, etc., I still have yet to see a thread/photos of a 29er with the original, funky, off-road bar, the moustache. Anyone had any experience with them on a big-wheeled bike. If you have any photos, post 'em!
Sorry, no photo, but I ran a mustache bar on my KM for awhile and loved it!
FYI: In the new QBP catalogue the Nitto mustache bar is available again for use with 25.4mm controls. ( MTB standard ID) This might make taking the plunge a little easier for you guys with hydro disc brakes. Also, I think that QBP is offering the Dimension branded mustache bar in 25.4mm also. That bar is black ano, for you dark component freaks.
Put some of that spendt Brooks leather handlebar tape on that and you'd have one pimp machine!
I have used them as well and found the forward curve nice, but the 90deg "straight back" is too much, perhaps a 55deg sweet (like the WTB bar sweep/flare)....now that would be a killer bar
Alex
"Put any one on one of these singlespeed bikes and they could not help but have fun"
- Otis Guy talking about klunkers c1976
I use them on my cross bike. They work well for that, but I have trouble finding a comfortable position on the bars for longer rides, as it starts to bother my wrists after while. I think part of the reason may be that I have quite a bit of drop from my saddle to the bars. A good friend uses flipped three speed bars and likes those more. I seem to have the same problem with my wrists on those bars. And so it goes.
However, I do like the Mary bars on my mtn. bike. For some reason, they seem like a good thing.
I had 49º sweep trekking bars on my slick-tire 29" Fisher. 1.5" drop or so. Worked really well, but the 49º grips did get tiresome on longer rides. Perfect for tight singletrack though , at 610mm wide.
My slightly wider zoom trekking bars with 38º (like Mary), only 1/2" drop, just make me want to ride all day long.
Expecting a Mary in this week, should be even better L wider and more drop!
I fail to see the point of moustaches. Fixed riders seem to like them, and I wonder why. Yes they do look freaky, which may score their main points.
With all of this talk about Marys, Midges, H-bar, etc., I still have yet to see a thread/photos of a 29er with the original, funky, off-road bar, the moustache. Anyone had any experience with them on a big-wheeled bike. If you have any photos, post 'em!
Sorry no photos, but my KM has been set up with a Mungo moustache bar for about a year now. This is my commuter/adventure/road bike setup, and I've probably logged at least 1500 miles on this bar. Works great for commuting and dirt-road (and even paved-road) riding, and I find it to be the most stable and comfortable bar I've yet used for those purposes. However, I do not like it for "real" offroad riding. Your hands end up too far forward and too close together on steep descents, and it's difficult to mount the brake levers so you have an appropriate braking position when your hands are all the way forward in the crook of the bar.
My only other problem with it is that it has a lot more forward reach than I need (i.e., similar to road drop bars), so in order for this short guy on a KM to get it to fit I have to run an extremely short stem. Fortunately PD makes a 26.0 x 50mm model. Running a short stem doesn't actually screw up the handling because the forward reach puts my hands back into a normal position anyway. FWIW, I'll probably try a Midge this summer just to see how it feels.
For any kind of real mountain biking I prefer the Mary bar I have on my Vulture, which I run inverted. Even Mary isn't ideal -- I find the 38º sweep to be a bit less than I'd like -- but the width is good and I don't have to constantly switch hand positions in rolling terrain. They're a huge improvement over the flat-bar-with-bar-ends setup I used to run.
Last edited by GlowBoy; 02-22-2006 at 01:58 PM.
"People like GloyBoy are deaf. They are partisan, intellectually lazy & usually very angry." -Jaybo
ive been running them for about 2-3 years on most of my bike my fixie monkey,my single speed van dessel,the single speed commuter and the road fixie.i dont ride anything else really i just love them mine are not nittos but some cheapy bars i found in an old lbs .
i bought 5 pairs the sixth is floating around town.no pics at work sorry.