bzzplugs

Quoted post said:

Hi guys,
I'm a geezer doing the davis double for the first time in 17 years and
looking for any possible advantage. Came across the buzzplugs for
handlebars on the web and am thinking they may help in a two hundred
mile ride re. vibrations and fatigue. Any experience/ opinions?
P.S. Its a steel frame.

Nobody here seems to have tried them, but will argue endlessly whether they can
possibly work.

I think they might help. Others will disagree.

Wear a helmet.

Ron

They might work, but additional padding under the tape is a sure fire
solution. You can get custom pads or just double tape the tops. Then
install your vibration doohickeys and you might get double comfort.

email hidden said:

Hi guys,
I'm a geezer doing the davis double for the first time in 17 years and
looking for any possible advantage. Came across the buzzplugs for
handlebars on the web and am thinking they may help in a two hundred
mile ride re. vibrations and fatigue. Any experience/ opinions?
P.S. Its a steel frame.

My opinion: Waste of money. Specialized claims that the bars I
recently installed on one of the bikes here have Zerts tech. There's
no perceptible difference in the feel of them relative to the ancient
Cinellis that were removed. It feels like the same amount of road
buzz comes right through. (Having examined their performance
comparison graph for the Zertz, I could find no basis for their
claims; I bought the bar because it was a bargain...but welcomed the
chance to see if I was wrong. As far as I can tell, I wasn't...and I
have had problems with road buzz producing numbness at times, so I'd
have been happier if the Zertz had worked.)
--
Typoes are a feature, not a bug.
Some gardening required to reply via email.
Words processed in a facility that contains nuts.

Ron Sonic said:

Quoted message said:

I'm a geezer doing the Davis double for the first time in 17 years
and looking for any possible advantage. Came across the buzz plugs
for handlebars on the web and am thinking they may help in a two
hundred mile ride re. vibrations and fatigue. Any experience or
opinions?

Quoted message said:

Nobody here seems to have tried them, but will argue endlessly
whether they can possibly work.

http://tinyurl.com/7xxok

I've tried them and cannot tell whether they are there or not. We
have a great chip seal road CAL HWY84 from La Honda to HWY1 on the
coast, that has all the handlebar vibrations you might want to talk
about. I find no difference.

http://tinyurl.com/nfp6t

As I mentioned previously, they can make a bare handlebar not ring
when dropped on a concrete floor, but bar tape does that too.

Quoted message said:

I think they might help. Others will disagree.

Quoted message said:

Wear a helmet.

Don't try so hard to discredit your "unbiased" opinion.

Jobst Brandt

<[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

Hi guys,
I'm a geezer doing the davis double for the first time in 17 years and
looking for any possible advantage. Came across the buzzplugs for
handlebars on the web and am thinking they may help in a two hundred
mile ride re. vibrations and fatigue. Any experience/ opinions?
P.S. Its a steel frame.
thnx

I have them (can't leave the LBS with money in my pocket). I can't feel any
difference, and we have rough roads. They're installed on a ti/carbon frame
with carbon fork, al stem and bars. One of these days when I'm bored, I'll
ride up and down the same road trying with and without.

Bestest Handsander said:

<[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

Hi guys,
I'm a geezer doing the davis double for the first time in 17 years
and looking for any possible advantage. Came across the buzzplugs for
handlebars on the web and am thinking they may help in a two hundred
mile ride re. vibrations and fatigue. Any experience/ opinions?
P.S. Its a steel frame.
thnx

I have them (can't leave the LBS with money in my pocket). I can't
feel any difference, and we have rough roads. They're installed on a
ti/carbon frame with carbon fork, al stem and bars. One of these days
when I'm bored, I'll ride up and down the same road trying with and
without.

Have a buddy change it out for you, then cover the holes/plugs with tape so
you don't know which way he/she prepped it for you.
--
Phil, Squid-in-Training

Phil said:

Bestest Handsander said:

<[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

Hi guys,
I'm a geezer doing the davis double for the first time in 17 years
and looking for any possible advantage. Came across the buzzplugs for
handlebars on the web and am thinking they may help in a two hundred
mile ride re. vibrations and fatigue. Any experience/ opinions?
P.S. Its a steel frame.
thnx

I have them (can't leave the LBS with money in my pocket). I can't
feel any difference, and we have rough roads. They're installed on a
ti/carbon frame with carbon fork, al stem and bars. One of these days
when I'm bored, I'll ride up and down the same road trying with and
without.

Have a buddy change it out for you, then cover the holes/plugs with tape so
you don't know which way he/she prepped it for you.

This kind of "blind" testing is the marketeer's worst nightmare. :-)

Quoted message said:

Hi guys,
I'm a geezer doing the davis double for the first time in 17 years and
looking for any possible advantage. Came across the buzzplugs for
handlebars on the web and am thinking they may help in a two hundred
mile ride re. vibrations and fatigue. Any experience/ opinions?
P.S. Its a steel frame.
thnx

The aluminum ones are almost certainly worthless, because of
insufficient mass. I tried a pair of the brass ones. I think they might
have had a slight effect, but the power of suggestion could have
influenced my thinking. I decided the extra 3 ounces of weight added to
the ends of my bars was not worth the questionable improvement. To put
it another way, the increase in comfort by reducing my tire pressure
only 5 psi was much more noticable. I ended up selling the bzzzkill
plugs on ebay for almost twice what I paid for them at my LBS. Gotta
love ebay.

Quoted message said:

Ron Sonic said:

Quoted message said:

I'm a geezer doing the Davis double for the first time in 17 years
and looking for any possible advantage. Came across the buzz plugs
for handlebars on the web and am thinking they may help in a two
hundred mile ride re. vibrations and fatigue. Any experience or
opinions?

Quoted message said:

Nobody here seems to have tried them, but will argue endlessly
whether they can possibly work.

http://tinyurl.com/7xxok

I've tried them and cannot tell whether they are there or not. We
have a great chip seal road CAL HWY84 from La Honda to HWY1 on the
coast, that has all the handlebar vibrations you might want to talk
about. I find no difference.

Cool, at least we've got one report.

Quoted message said:

http://tinyurl.com/nfp6t

As I mentioned previously, they can make a bare handlebar not ring
when dropped on a concrete floor, but bar tape does that too.

Quoted message said:

I think they might help. Others will disagree.

Quoted message said:

Wear a helmet.

Don't try so hard to discredit your "unbiased" opinion.

The helmet suggestion was mostly in reference to starting a thread on vibration
damping. But as an additional whack at the hornet's nest, well, you can count on
me.

Ron

Are you talking the Bontrager handlebar plugs? They made all the
difference between my aluminum bike being tolerable and being enjoyable
on rough Illinois farm roads - they work!

Quoted message said:

Hi guys,
I'm a geezer doing the davis double for the first time in 17 years and
looking for any possible advantage. Came across the buzzplugs for
handlebars on the web and am thinking they may help in a two hundred
mile ride re. vibrations and fatigue. Any experience/ opinions?
P.S. Its a steel frame.
thnx

On Wed, 19 Apr 2006 01:37:05 GMT, richard <[email hidden]>

Quoted message said:

Are you talking the Bontrager handlebar plugs? They made all the
difference between my aluminum bike being tolerable and being enjoyable
on rough Illinois farm roads - they work!

Which one's are you using? The brass version, sells for around $19.99,
or the aluminum version $9.99?

I was at my LBS today, I wanted to look at the brass version, but they
only stock the aluminum one.

Life is Good!
Jeff

Jeff Starr said:

On Wed, 19 Apr 2006 01:37:05 GMT, richard <[email hidden]>

Quoted message said:

Are you talking the Bontrager handlebar plugs? They made all the
difference between my aluminum bike being tolerable and being
enjoyable on rough Illinois farm roads - they work!

Which one's are you using? The brass version, sells for around $19.99,
or the aluminum version $9.99?

I was at my LBS today, I wanted to look at the brass version, but they
only stock the aluminum one.

Life is Good!
Jeff

Maybe vibrations get filtered out as they traverse the frame. Maybe it's
like a car performance enhancement *snicker* where the intake helps the
turbo, and the low backpressure exhaust helps the whole thing flow better...
it's cumulative. Specialized Zertz and all.
--
Phil, Squid-in-Training

Squid-in-Training said:

Maybe vibrations get filtered out as they traverse the frame. Maybe it's
like a car performance enhancement *snicker* where the intake helps the
turbo, and the low backpressure exhaust helps the whole thing flow better...
it's cumulative. Specialized Zertz and all.

Maybe.

I do believe in most endeavors, success is in the details. A good
example of this is with audio systems. One guy will throw it all
together in a stack, stick his speakers in the corners and it won't
sound very good. Another guy, will carefully isolate each component,
properly place the speakers, put acoustic treatments throughout the
room, and get the full benefits of those components.
Another good example is in wheelbuilding.

Like I said, in life, in most things, success is in the details.

Of course you have to beware of snake oil, Bzzzkillers are based on
science, but whether the benefits are of any value, it's hard to say.

I'm not sure what your "*snicker*" implies, seeing as your example is
feasible.

Life is Good!
Jeff

Jeff Starr said:

Quoted message said:

Maybe vibrations get filtered out as they traverse the frame. Maybe it's
like a car performance enhancement *snicker* where the intake helps the
turbo, and the low backpressure exhaust helps the whole thing flow better...
it's cumulative. Specialized Zertz and all.

Quoted message said:

I'm not sure what your "*snicker*" implies, seeing as your example is
feasible.

The spammers have made the phrase "performance enhancement" snicker-worthy
all by itself.

Jasper

Quoted message said:

I'm a geezer doing the davis double for the first time in 17 years and
looking for any possible advantage. Came across the buzzplugs for
handlebars on the web and am thinking they may help in a two hundred
mile ride re. vibrations and fatigue. Any experience/ opinions?

I have no experience with such things on bicycles, but I know a thing
or two about bar end weights on motorcycles. Unfortunately, what I
know is that there is no simple answer. Sometimes bar end weights
help, and sometimes they don't. At other times they can make things
worse.

The handlebar, because of its length, diameter, thickness, material,
etc., has a set of natural resonant frequencies. If some cyclical
vibration is fed in (say from a motorcycle's engine), and if it tends
to stoke one of the bar's natural frequencies, then resonance at the
handlebar can make the perceived vibration much stronger. In this
case, adding bar end weights changes the natural frequencies of the
handlebar and may serve to reduce felt vibration. If such weights are
mounted with an intermediary elastomer that has a lot of hysteresis
(damping), then that can add another mechanism to attenuate resonant
vibration in the handlebar-- but it's worth noting that most m/c bar
end weights don't have elastomeric mounts.

A bicycle handlebar is not as tidy an application for bar end weights.
For one thing, the vibration at a bicycle's handlebars tends to be
"white noise" with respect to its frequency spectrum. There is not a
lot of opportunity for resonant vibration to get established. For
another, the amount of bar-end mass that results in noteworthy
improvements on motorcycle handlebars would be a bit obnoxious on a
typical road bike. Typically they run upwards of a pound for the pair.

http://www.cyclegadgets.com/Products/product.asp?Item=MS-BW

It seems to me that you'd get a much better deal in terms of benefit
per added cost or added weight by upgrading your bar tape or grips to
something squishier. Grab-On makes some unsightly but very comfy
tubular foam grips for drop bars that offer a much nicer perch than
even cork tape (to my hands, anyway).

http://www.foam-tubing-grips.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=9&products_id=22

Chalo Colina

Chalo said:

Quoted message said:

I'm a geezer doing the davis double for the first time in 17 years
and looking for any possible advantage. Came across the buzzplugs for
handlebars on the web and am thinking they may help in a two hundred
mile ride re. vibrations and fatigue. Any experience/ opinions?

I have no experience with such things on bicycles, but I know a thing
or two about bar end weights on motorcycles. Unfortunately, what I
know is that there is no simple answer. Sometimes bar end weights
help, and sometimes they don't. At other times they can make things
worse.

The handlebar, because of its length, diameter, thickness, material,
etc., has a set of natural resonant frequencies. If some cyclical
vibration is fed in (say from a motorcycle's engine), and if it tends
to stoke one of the bar's natural frequencies, then resonance at the
handlebar can make the perceived vibration much stronger. In this
case, adding bar end weights changes the natural frequencies of the
handlebar and may serve to reduce felt vibration. If such weights are
mounted with an intermediary elastomer that has a lot of hysteresis
(damping), then that can add another mechanism to attenuate resonant
vibration in the handlebar-- but it's worth noting that most m/c bar
end weights don't have elastomeric mounts.

My CBR600 with clip-ons are short, rigid, and transmit vibration very well.
I attempted to fill the bars with lead fishing weights and silicone sealant,
but when I took the barend weights off, I found that they were filled from
the factory with a brittle, heavy metal insert with circular rubber mounts,
threaded for a barend. I took it out to determine if I could use it, and I
didn't notice a difference in feel when I was riding it around w/o weights.

I've noticed that at highway speeds (~7k rpm) the handlebars vibrate like
crazy, but at the triple clamps, there's almost no vibration in comparison.
The clip-ons just amplify the engine many times over.

My next bike may very well be a V-twin.

I've been trying to engineer a way of getting my pegs mounted with some
rubber shims from a bicycle light set.

--
Phil, Squid-in-Training

The aluminum ones.

Warning! They are disposable items! The elastomer deteriorates. After
several months, if you decided to take them out for some reason, you
may not be able to get them back in. Given that, try the $10 first.

Jeff Starr said:

On Wed, 19 Apr 2006 01:37:05 GMT, richard <[email hidden]>

Quoted message said:

Are you talking the Bontrager handlebar plugs? They made all the
difference between my aluminum bike being tolerable and being enjoyable
on rough Illinois farm roads - they work!

Which one's are you using? The brass version, sells for around $19.99,
or the aluminum version $9.99?

I was at my LBS today, I wanted to look at the brass version, but they
only stock the aluminum one.

Life is Good!
Jeff