Hey everyone and welcome back to another Tuesday tip where in this week's video we're going to be talking about BMX handlebar geometry
So if you're new here every Tuesday
I try to make a tips and tricks video on everything from working on your bike making working on your bike easier to
Doing tricks while actually riding your bike and as I said this week. We're gonna be talking about BMX handlebar geometry
It's actually a fairly simple subject and a lot of it has to do with personal preference
But there are some stats there to go over and there's a few extra things that we can talk about
Just to put a little bit more meat on the bones of this video so when it comes to handlebar
Geometry, there's four main measurements that we can take a look at those are rise width up sweep and back sweep
But before we get into those. Let's talk about the other topics that I mentioned previously
there's three of those and those are the type of metal that the handlebars are actually made of heat treating and
to budding
When it comes to the type of metal that the handlebars are made of there's two different types of metal that bars are usually made
of and that is
4130 chromoly and high ten steel and the differences between the two have to do with strength and weight
41:30 is
stronger than high ten steel therefore it allows you to use thinner tubing which makes it so your handlebars are lighter and
Most of the time we only see high 10 steel bars on complete bikes
And if I were to give any advice on this subject if you're going to be doing
Anything more than riding in circles doing bunny hops in your driveway. You need to have
41:30 bars on your bike because you do not want to deal with your bars breaking because usually
handlebars break right about here or
right here beside the stem and if they break right here what you're dealing with is basically a
Shank on this end of the bars
And that's not something that you want to risk falling
Into, so if you're doing anything more than just doing bunny hops and riding in circles get 4130 bars
If you don't already have them when it comes to heat treating
This is another process that is done to make your bar stronger, and this is done on
4130 chromoly metal and basically it's a process done to change the properties of the metal by heating it up to a certain temperature
For a certain period of time it's supposed to make the metal stronger
But if it's done
Improperly it can actually make the metal weaker there's companies out there like Odyssey who have their patented 41 thermo heat treating process
That is guaranteed against bending and breaking for life
So it's clear that they put a lot of trust into their heat treating process
and it's clear that we can - so like I said before this is another thing that you definitely want to have in your
Handle bars if you're doing more than just riding in circles and doing bunny hops in your driveway
So now that we've talked about the metal that actually makes the bars up and the heat treating process that's supposed to make them stronger
There's another thing that has to do with the bars make up that we can talk about and that is
tube budding to budding is the process of
Strategically thickening tubing in places where it's more necessary to have thicker tubing and more strength so for example
There's a diagram that I'll show on screen now that shows on fly handlebars the tubing is one point six millimeters
Thick on the bends around the bottom where it goes into the stem
And then as it goes up the bars the tubing is only one millimeter thick and then we approach the bend again
And it's one point six millimeters again. Then as we approach where the grip goes in the middle there
It's only one millimeter thick and then towards the end it's one point six millimeters thick again
This process is supposed to make the bar stronger and strategically save weight in places where it's not necessary
This is also done on frames strategically this is something
That's done by a lot of different companies and has been for a long time
So it's definitely something that a lot of people put trust in but just like anything else
It's good to be informed that it exists so that you can make an informed decision
Whenever you're buying your handlebars because like I said before
Having a shank on the end of your bars or breaking them down here
Just breaking bars in general is not something that you ever want to experience
But now that we've talked about those three different topics that don't have as much to do with the geometry
Let's move on to the geometry itself and first
We'll talk about Rhys Rhys is the measurement from the very top of the tubing on the grip side?
To the very bottom of the tubing where it goes in the stem
Typically these days we see a lot of people running anywhere from eight and a half to ten inch rise bars
I think there's even been some that are higher and this measurement is something that can be impacted by another one of the terms
We'll be talking about and that is up sweep, but before we get there
let's talk about the width and
pretty clearly this is just the
Measurement from the end of the bar here to the end of the bar here that is the width
And we see everything these days from
27 to
31 maybe even 32 if it exists
I know I have a friend who runs
31 inch wide bars or at least he did I run my bars at 28 and a half inches wide which is a personal preference
For me, and it's just what these bars came in when I got them
And I didn't feel like cutting them so I got used to it
And it feels good to me width of your bars is really up to personal preference
I mean if you've been riding long enough
You know that the trend used to be super super skinny bars for bar spins
and then it moved to very very wide bars and
Personally I believe that the sweet spot is right in the middle of those which is in that twenty eight and a half
Width range one thing that I didn't mention yet
Is that rise is the only handlebar geometry factor that is generally?
Accepted to have an effect on your riding
And that is because higher the rise of your bars the less hunched-over you are and if you ride bikes for long enough
You know that the more hunched over
you are the more the lower back pain you have but this is also something that can be supplemented by getting a
Top-load stem these bars are eight and a half inches in rise which before I got a top-load stem would lead to lower
Back pain almost every time I rode, but as soon as I switch to a top-load stem
Which effectively does the exact same thing as?
raising the rise on your bars the back pain went away and
Have to get taller bars to do it
So that's definitely something that you can consider if you have access to a top-load stem
And you want to try having your bars higher
some people need both some people need a
Top-load stem and taller rise bars because they're eight feet tall or whatever it might be but like I said with the width
It's also down to personal preference because some people like being hunched over or feel
they ride better that way and
Some people feel like they ride better whenever they're standing taller even if they're not really tall enough to make the numbers for higher rise
Bars make sense it's all down to personal preference and that leads me into
Up sweep and back sweep up sweep is the measurement of how far your bars are bent?
Upward and back sweep is the measurement of how far your bars are bent?
Backwards these bars are bent to degrees up and ten degrees back
And this is something that can have an effect on how your wrists feel whenever you're riding if they're too far forward your wrists will
Be bent a certain way and it can be uncomfortable for some people but it can also be
Comfortable for others these two measurements up sweep and back sweep are things that are completely down to personal
Preference and how it makes you feel while you're riding in some instances there's different disciplines of riding that take different
geometry on the handlebars
It's common for flat line riders to have less back sweep and up sweep in their bars than it is for someone who rides
Freestyle and jumps dirt jumps for example because it's said that more back sweep
Gives you more control in turning which is something that you definitely want whenever you're riding dirt jumps and going very fast
But in flatland they move their bars backwards a lot and having a lot of back sweep and up sweep
dramatically changes the feel of your bars whenever they're backwards
Whereas if you didn't have back sweep and up sweep your bars would pretty much feel the same both forwards and backwards
They would just be further back and closer to you whenever they're backwards now
That's really all that there is to talk about when it comes to the geometry itself because most of the factors with bar
Geometry are all down to personal preference and what you think things feel like whenever you're riding
And how you are comfortable with your bars while you're riding your bike
But there's a couple other things that we have to talk about the first of those is
different cross bars in BMX handlebars for example
I have the know where candy bars and these are bent downwards to allow for different
clearances for different tricks like candy bars and
Other stuff like that and there's other bars that even have a straight crossbar with different shapes like Scottie Kramer's Jackson bars
I think they're called they have a good example of outside budding on the tubing where they're thicker
Towards the ends of the cross bar and then it gets thinner in the center
So you can kind of look at those and visualize what budding might look like on the inside?
It's just it's convex versus the concave of the
Scottie Cramer bars, then there's shadow with their teardrop shaped cross bars
There's a ton of different examples of handle bars with different shaped cross bars these days
They're very common and to my knowledge they don't have an effect on the handlebars
structurally
And there's also different styles of handlebars in the number of tubes that make up the bars themselves if you look at these handlebars
We've got one long tube here, and then we've got the cross bar these would be called two-piece bars
And then there's four piece handlebars if you look here
I've got a four piece example of the bars that I was just showing
We have the longer tubes here that make up the grip area and the down part of the bars
Then we've got the cross bar
And then we've got the tubing that goes into the stem itself these are four piece
Handlebars the ones that I was just showing were two piece handlebars and while they're much less common
There's also six piece handlebars in BMX the gripping area is made up of two tubes on their own
Then we've got the tubing that goes down, so there's two more tubes
and we've got the cross bar and
The tube that goes into the stem so in all they make up six pieces to make the six piece handlebars
I think Hoffman still makes a pair of these. I'm not 100% sure but they exist and
That's everything that we have to talk about when it comes to BMX handlebars and their
Geometry if you enjoyed this video hit the subscribe button is free
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Tuesday tips every single time that I have something to talk about on any given Tuesday
I also do a BMX news video on Fridays with any other types of riding videos in between
So thanks for watching. I hope you found this video useful, and we'll see you next time goodbye