As noted several times, I’ve broken a number of old aluminum bike parts in recent months. I have been fortunate to notice the failures before any of them caused any catastrophic wrecks. But this has me heading down the rabbit hole of replacing parts on my road bike. The stem and bars are quite old, I believe the bars are likely original 2000 vintage. The stem is designed for a 1 1/8” steerer tube with a shim to grip the 1” steerer, so I must have put that on more recently. I have a picture from a dozen years ago that looks like this stem was on the bike. It’s been a minute. The stem bolt heads are also rusty and I have not managed to find the right replacements.
At any rate, a failure of either part while riding could be very painful.
I have had a 17 degree stem on the road bike to deal with its “very aggressive” geometry. It looks bad, so this time I decided to try a 6 degree stem ($42) with a Ritchey Ergomax handlebar which has a 10 mm rise ($44). This is a relatively new road bar feature, or at least it is to me.
It looks slightly better with the less extreme stem angle. I may have to move the levers down slightly, this picture makes them look too high.
It’s pretty hard to see the handlebar’s rise from the side, but it is more obvious from the front. The overall position of the bars is pretty similar to the old bar-stem combination, but this will require some time in the saddle to confirm.
The old bar had a flattened section of the curve at the drops, the theory was to fit your hand better in that position. I never did like that as well as a regular old classic bend of a Cinelli 65. This looks to be an improvement over the one I had on the bike. Just so long as my hand fits into this radius of bend.
The old bar had two cable grooves on each side, ideal for the Campagnolo cable housing exit points on the Ergopower lever. This handlebar has only one cable groove and it doesn’t start until under the tops. Also, I have the cable housings on each side routed slightly wrong because I wasn’t paying attention when I last changed out cables. A few wraps of strapping tape kept the housing in a good enough place to re-install the bar tape, but there is inevitably a bulge. I am hoping none of this causes an annoyance when holding the bars.
Speaking of potential annoyances this bar comes with a 12 degree flare of the drops and a 5 degree backward sweep of the tops. These could be fantastic features or things that bother me, so of course I am eager to test it out.
One additional feature is that the bar also has a flattened airfoil cross section on the tops, so it will be interesting to see if that is annoying helpful on the road.
New bars, stem, wheels and front derailleur went on this bike recently, so it’s time to weigh it. With a 28 c rear tire and a 25 c front tire, not particularly light ones (nor are the tubes), it’s 20.27 pounds or 9.195 kg.
This still feels very light to me when I pick it up, even if this is heavy by modern standards. My steel framed road bikes were probably in the 23 pound range, and that set my expectation level. The new bike is listed at 8.55 kg for a medium, presumably without pedals, so I’m thinking mine should come in under 9 kg with pedals on it.
Sun Dappled Forest 
One thought on “Updating more aluminum”