Typical Road Bike Handlebar Width

There are two schools.

Typical road bike handlebar width. Mainly bmx older mountain bike bars. Now put them on the same bike with their appropriate sized frame and the same handlebar width. Road mtb women magazine offers. Overview of all including obsolete handlebar size standards.

Obsolete british size for steel handlebars common on older 3 speeds. The most common sizes range from 40 44cm again in increments of 2cm. Table 2 gives an overview of all the handlebar size standards with a short explanation of each. The width issue.

You may need 800 millimeter handlebars to tame a 280 pound 60 horsepower off road motorcycle but few riders need that much leverage to control a vehicle that weighs only one fourth of its rider. Widths vary and some manufacturers measure the outside to the outside of the widest point of the bar while some measure the center to the center of the widest point. Eventually the mountain bike world started to learn its lesson handlebars started to get wider. The standard is measuring your shoulder blade width and getting the same width handlebar.

However 35mm has become widely adopted for mountain bikes. It should also be noted that some bars flare out in the drops and are a little wider at that point than they are where the levers would be mounted. A more stable upper body allows you to ride faster and safely navigate more technical features. This makes it much more important on the trail than on the road.

Road bike bars the drop bar road bars now mainly come in two different clamp sizes the older 26 0 and the newer oversize 31 8. A few companies including deda still make bars in the size but 31 8mm remains the road standard. There are narrower and wider handlebars but they are harder to find. Easton s standard handlebars reach to 750mm the downhill havoc.

There is a correlation between modern long low and slack geometry and wide handlebars but if your guess was more leverage you d be mostly wrong. It would be a pretty good guess to say one of those riders isn t experiencing the same level of comfort and control as the other rider. The larger rider is likely to fit a wider 760 or 780 millimeter bar. Some of it just needs to be what feels right especially for the average cyclist that s not trying to maximize aerodynamics and efficiency at the expense of comfort.

First let s discuss width.