• THE TWO DOLLAR BRAKE LEVERS THAT WON THE TOUR
• MODERN-DAY ALTERNATIVES
• HOW TO PREPARE YOUR AERO BARS
• LATEST ADDENDUM ON FRONT-END INFO

THE TWO DOLLAR BRAKE LEVERS THAT WON THE TOUR

I was in Germany visiting a retail store one day back around 1991. I saw a brake lever on what is called in Northern Europe a City Bike. This is roughly equivalent to the three-speed upright bike that adults used to ride when I was a kid.

The handlebar was roughly perpendicular to the frame, like the bar on a mountain bike, but it sort of did this curvy thing that bars on commuter bikes do. The lever stuck in the end of the bar, like a handlebar plug, and the blade of the lever pointed back toward the centerline of the bike so the rider wouldn’t have to change hand positions to brake. It was like a MTB lever turned around backwards, like it was mounted on the outside facing in.

I wrote down the model number, and when I got back stateside I called Dia Compe, the manufacturer. (I knew them because I was buying headsets from them.) "I’d like a sample of Dia Compe catalog number 188," I said (pictured at left).

"Hmm, we don’t seem to stock that. Wait, here it is. No, Dan, you’ve got that wrong. This couldn’t possibly be an item you’d be interested in; we know the sort of bikes you make, and you must have the Dia Compe model number wrong."

"This is a brake lever for a commuter bike, right?"

"Yeah, OK, I’ll bite, what is it for?"

"Don’t ask, just ship."

Long story short, ten years later Lance Armstrong won the Tour de France time trial with Dia Compe #188s on his bike. It is stocked original equipment by QR, Trek, Cannondale—just about everybody who puts a pursuit bar and clip-ons onto a bike. But isn’t it time triathletes with Dura Ace and Hed wheels started using something other than $2 brake levers? (That’s what they cost for original equipment manufacturers back then. Dia Compe, realizing what they’ve got, has since quadrupled the price over the years).

Happily, there are alternatives now. What’s more, there are a lot of things you can do to make your bike more rideable, and we’ll tell you how over the next three days.


MODERN-DAY ALTERNATIVES

TThe best values are found in products on which a lot more money has been spent on development than will ever be realized from the profits. "Why would a company want to do that?" you might ask. No company would. But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen.

Take, for example, Hed3 race wheels. DuPont spent an absolute fortune on the design, engineering and construction of that wheel, then handed it to Specialized to market it. After DuPont decided it couldn’t make the product profitably it set up a factory in Spain, in partnership with the Spanish government, to make them—another fortune spent. Specialized then decided it couldn’t remain in the wheel business—another fortune spent, and a plug pulled two years too soon; every bike company is now scrambling to be in the wheel business. So Hed ends up with what might be the world’s most fawned-over wheel by big industry, one which has won design awards the world over, and a tiny fraction of development costs. Buyers are the beneficiaries.

In a lesser way, this is the same sort of process that occurred with the Syntace Space Control brake lever. A German firm called RTI Sports was the original developer of this lever. This company historically distributed products for triathletes in Germany, including Softride, Speedplay and QR. It developed this lever with the help of German manufacturing engineers, and after two years of work the project was given to Syntace president Jo Kleiber, who tweaked the product and moved the manufacture to Taiwan. The result is a lever that is not inexpensive but is a huge up-spec from the #188 and costs WAY less than it would have had RTI gone ahead with its original plan and had it manufactured in Germany.

One problem with this lever, if you want to keep the purchase price down, is that its internal routing requires a base bar (pursuit bar) with specific drilling. This means you don’t buy just the levers, but the levers and Syntace’s pursuit bar as well. The levers sell for $89, the bar for $59. But you’ll only consider this a problem until you get these on your bike, and then you’ll think it’s money well spent. This is especially the case if you are like us and ride around with nice stuff on your bike. This lever replaces the $2 brake lever your $3,000 bike originally came with. A Syntace base bar and brake lever makeover will bring your otherwise nice bike up to the level of the Dura Ace derailleurs and titanium-railed Flite saddle.

Profile also makes aero brake levers, and they look pretty nice. We shot a picture of a pair of them at the IM California expo. But we’re not sure how much attention Profile pays to these. Those running the booth did know anything about them, and the photo on Profile’s website (to the left) appears to be a version that—we think—is for people who want to mount their levers in the ends of clip-ons, versus the levers we saw at the expo that mount conventionally into pursuit bars. These were $99 a pair.

At this moment we’d recommend sticking with the Syntace, as Profile still seems to be figuring out what they’re trying to sell in this category. We called Nytro Multisport and even they, who know everything about anything aero, were fuzzy about Profile’s brake lever offerings. But the Nytro guys dig Syntace’s Space Controls.



HOW TO PREPARE YOUR AERO BARS

I often to refer to Syntace products when describing ways to maximize the rideability and efficiency of the front end of a tri-bike. Obviously, this is not the only company making aero bars, base bars and brake levers. But I do not often use bars made by other companies, and it is my observation—and only an observation, with no data to support my view—that Syntace is now the most prevalent maker of tri-bars in the upper-end tri market. Perhaps I might change my mind about that in the future, but this is where I stand today. So because I consider this company’s products both well-made and prevalent, I don’t believe I’m writing in too parochial a fashion when I sometimes omit competitor’s products.

Although I give them praise, there are some problems with Syntace bars.

First, both the Streamliner (SL) and C2 clip-ons have upturned segments (the most forward extending segments) that are, in my opinion, consistently too long. I always cut about half the distance off, regardless of the size or style. Why? Because you’ll want to have your forearms lie flat in the armrests. If you do, your forearms will parallel the extensions—that part of the clip-on that extends straight forward. Your hands will grip the upturned segments of each clip-on just after the final bend of each. If you were to actually grip the clip-on at its terminus—the way it comes from the factory—you’d have to reach up with your hands. Your forearms would angle upward, no longer paralleling the clip-on extensions. That means your weight would not be applied evenly throughout the length of the armrest, but would be concentrated on a point at the very back.

Of course, you could just grab onto the clip-on where it is most comfortable: just after the final upturned bend. But if your shifters are on the ends of the clip-ons, you’ll have to reach up to shift. Why not simply have the shifters where your hands already are? I always end up cutting off about half the upturned length of a Syntace clip-on. The difference is apparent when looking at the two photos at left that show Syntace clip-ons—the upper a pair of cut-down SLs, the lower a C2 with stock extensions, both with Shimano bar-end shifters mounted.

Speaking of the two models, another issue I have with Syntace is its sizing. The Streamliner size L is longer than the C2 size L, or so it seems to me. This is not a big issue unless you were to order an SL mail-order figuring it would fit like a C2 of similar size. It will not. While I ride a size L on a C2, I will ride medium Streamliners.

Speaking of shorter clip-ons, there is a great rationale for riding with them one size shorter than you might otherwise find most comfortable—and in some cases it is an imperative. I find two types of people exceedingly difficult to fit properly to tri-bikes, and riding with a shorter clip-on is almost a necessity for them.

Those whom God made with short torsos and long legs live with a conundrum, bike-fit-wise. If you refer to the Slowtwitch tri-bike-fit page you’ll see that we advocate right angles between the upper arm and torso. This—in conjunction with a relatively aggressive aero position—almost guarantees that an athlete so dimensioned will hit the backs of his armrests with his kneecaps when climbing out of the saddle. Besides being painful, this makes for an untenable climbing position.

Placement of a longer stem is the only way around this, and it does the trick—but at a considerable cost in comfort and ergonomics. The work-around for this is to replace the aero bar with one that has a shorter extension. In so doing, the distance from the saddle to the ends of the bars is preserved, which by extension preserves the right-angle body position spoken of above.

Essentially, two things have changed on the bike with the longer-stem-and-shorter-clip-on adjustment: The armrests have been moved further up the forearm and out of the way of the knees; and the base bar (pursuit bar) has been pushed a little further in front of the center of gravity of the bike.

What is the net result of all this? The armrests are not going to be in quite as comfortable a spot as is optimal. Instead of being just in front of the elbow, they are further up the forearm. But this is a worthwhile trade-off considering the alternative of bruised knees. Moving the out-of-the-saddle hand position further forward is probably not a problem. Most tri-specific bikes have fairly short cockpits and could use a couple of extra centimeters here anyway.

The other such problem fit is the person who—because of a longer than average femur, or just because he likes to ride this way—sits a bit further in arrears of the "tri-standard" 78-degree (or so) seat-angle. Again, if you consider the right-angle requirement spoken of above, you’ve moved the entire cockpit of the bike back relative to the bottom bracket. We’ve again moved the armrests back too far and will again have the knees-to-armrests problem. The solution is the same: longer stem, shorter clip-on.

What about those who are new to the sport and have heard from all their friends that they should start with a standard road bike? What if they take this advice but still want aero bars? Fine, but now the problem is the same as with the riders above, but to an even greater degree. This is the rationale for the "shorty" bars some companies make (such as the Cinelli Spinacis and Cornas). Of course, in these cases, the armrests are so far forward—if there are any armrests at all—that they’ll contact the rider underneath the wrist.

What if you want to go to a slightly-more-forward-than-road-race position? I noticed at Ironman California that Spinergy tech rep Mike Laurion had this exact position on his new Giant TCR 2. He rode what is roughly 75 degrees of relative seat angle. What was called for was simply an even shorter clip-on, but not quite as short as a "shorty." Although he is 6’5", Laurion had a size small Streamliner on the bike—and although the armrests were well up his forearm, the bike fit him nicely.

Notice that there are two immutable, unchangeable distances: The measurement between vertical lines passing through the bottom bracket and the back of the armrest, and the distance between the saddle nose and the clip-on end.

What measurements are mutable? Vertical lines passing through the saddle nose and the bottom bracket, and the distance from the armrest to the clip-on terminus. Another way of saying this is that you can’t mess with knee clearance when you’re out of the saddle, and you must preserve the right angle between torso and upper arm. Everything else is on the table.

But there is another thing to consider. Remember that as you move the saddle rearward—versus the bottom bracket—you are not going to be able to get into as aggressive an aero position as you would with a more forward position. So while you are making these adjustments, if they include moving the saddle further back, you may also have to correspondingly add some millimeters, or even centimeters, of stem height.

Finally, there is the issue of the clip-on itself. In the past, there have been some products on the market that, frankly, are not that well made. In an effort to afford the rider every sort of adjustability, some aero bars seem to me to be rickety. Your body knows instinctively when it ought not to put much weight on a questionable platform, and I’ve seen riders experience a big increase in comfort by simply replacing flimsy aero bars with stable ones, with no difference in positioning. If you subconsciously unweight the armrest every time you see a bump in the road, you’re doing so with your low-back spinal erector muscles. After a long enough time your low back will get tired, and then sore. A set of clip-ons that are well-made, robust and durable will instill confidence in the rider, allowing the torso to comfortably rest in the aero position.