Yes, I was making the distinction between seeing the ends of the bar move vs seeing the bar itself bending. You made it sound like you can see the bend in the bar, like the curve in a fishing rod when there's a fish on.
Anyway, for context, I just pulled my road bike out of the bike locker here at the office. Heat Treated Nitto Noodles 46cm and a Nitto Pearl 11 stem. I grabbed the brakelever hoods and pushed down hard and let the bars flex back up when I unload it. I'd estimate the amplitude of flexy travel at the brakelevers is about 10-15mm. Definitely less than an inch, definitely about half an inch. I would call that "normal". I would not call that "rock solid", but I don't think it's dramatically different from the amount of flex I see in the Albatross cockpit that I have on another bike. Next I grab both brakelevers and do kind of a swimming motion: pull on this lever push on that one and roll it. Again, I'd say it's about +/-1cm of flexiness. Since your stem is longer than mine in extension, yours should flex even more. Since your stem has a longer vertical extension than mine, it should flex more. Since your bars are wider, it should flex more. Since your bar ends are farther behind the axis of the clamp, yours should probably flex more. But, since you say your Albatross bars are "rock solid" in comparison, then I don't know what to say. I don't know if 'rock solid' means no discernible flex at all, or if it feels in the neighborhood of the ~1cm flex on my bike, or something else. Maybe since you don't have your Chocos fully installed, you should put them on a bike with an arbitrarily stiff mountain bike stem, and separate out the bar flex part from the stem flex part. I don't know how much flex is too much. I guess if it were me and it was a lot more than one inch of flex, maybe that would freak me out. If you think the flex is going to make you afraid to ride your bike the ways you want to ride it, then that's too much for you. Flex doesn't mean it's going to break, of course. Lot's of stiff things break, and lots of flexy things don't break. I wish I could reach through the monitor to feel your setup. On Tuesday, February 23, 2016 at 2:47:33 PM UTC-8, drew wrote: > > Hey bill, > No grips on the bars yet. And I can definitely see flex. If I had someone > here to help, they could measure while I push down. There is a quite > visible spring up movement when I remove weight. > > Tried the same level of push on my wife's albatrossed bike + 12cm Tallux > and with a 11cm Tallux + map ahearne bars and there is basically zero give. > Rock solid. However, 13cm tallux+choco=bouncy. > > Not sure if it's necessarily a bad thing since I've never experienced this > flexy of a cockpit. It's almost to the point where part of me wonders if > either the bars or the stem are defective, which is why i put it to the > group for some context. > > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/rbw-owners-bunch. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
