STI Levers on Time Trial Bars? ?

gclark8 said:

I have a lady friend with short legs and small hands. She is having difficulty reaching the levers on her drop bar road bike. She has cyclocross levers for the brakes up on the flats but still with the reach adjusted to minimum, gear changing is a stretch and reaching the STI lever for braking is impossible.

I was looking at my TT bars with their 105 brake levers and I wonderd if anyone has tried STI levers on TT bars, with the levers under the side bars.

Easton has a women specific handlebar in yellow color. Maybe that would help with the reach.

gclark8 said:

I have a lady friend with short legs and small hands. She is having difficulty reaching the levers on her drop bar road bike. She has cyclocross levers for the brakes up on the flats but still with the reach adjusted to minimum, gear changing is a stretch and reaching the STI lever for braking is impossible.

I was looking at my TT bars with their 105 brake levers and I wonderd if anyone has tried STI levers on TT bars, with the levers under the side bars.

A couple of thoughts .....

One thing that (from your comments) is not clear to me. Is she using the STI brifters for braking, or the cyclocross levers, or both? If she's only using the STI controls for shifting (and not for braking), then it makes little sense not to go to barcons for shifting.

Most TT setups use barcons for shifting. If someone has short arms, this is an easy problem to solve when using barcons - just cut off the TT bars to the correct length. Same for the brakes. Use bar end type brake levers and cut back the bar ends to fit her arms. Obviously, you need TT bars that can be cut back, but these are pretty common. Get a hacksaw and see the articles on the Easton site for cutting carbon (if that's what you have), and go to town. A clamp-on cutting guide like the Park SG-6 Threadless Saw Guide makes cut downs much easier. It's made for headsets, but is a great aid for cutting any type of tube.

If she is insistant on using STI brifters, then she'd be best off getting the brifters that are designed for people with small hands. The ST-R700(for 10spd), ST-R600(9spd), and ST-R500(8spd), are exactly for this purpose.

Putting STI type shifters out on the side bars kind of defeats the aerodynamics that TT bars are designed to optimize. You might as well keep regular drop bars and get the add-on arm rests.

About the only deviation you will see (with any regularity) on the pros' TT bikes is that more and more of them are adding a second front brake lever on one of the TT arms. Otherwise it's all barcons on the TT arms and bar end brake levers on the side arms. This setup has been pretty well thought out and refined by now.

Thanks so much for the replys, now for some clarifications:

This is the bar she proposes to use: http://www.pro-bikegear.net/content/products.php?id=010207&lang=en

She will not be using aero bars so bar end shifters are out.

She cannot reach the drops, her arms are too short.

At the moment, she cannot reach around the hoods with bar tape to use the STIs for braking, her fingers are too short. The tips of the fingers only just reach the lever for gear changing. The levers are short reach 8 speed Sora, adjusted all the way in. She uses cyclocross levers for braking.

This afternoon I tried my TT bars on her stem. She could reach the brake levers if they were able to be adjusted all the way in. However my bars have a 2" drop, the "Pro" bars are flat.

We are going to ask my LBS if anyone locally has tried STIs on flat TT bars so she can just have a feel of how it works before stripping down new drop bars.

gclark8 said:

Thanks so much for the replys, now for some clarifications:

This is the bar she proposes to use: pro-bikegear.netproducts.phpOpen ↗

She will not be using aero bars so bar ens shifters are out.

She cannot reach the drops, her arms are too short.

At the moment, she cannot reach around the hoods with bar tape to use the STI for breaking, her fingers are to short. The tips of the fingers only just reach the lever for gear changing. The levers are short reach 8 speed Sora, adjusted all the way in. She uses cyclocross levers for braking.

I wouldn't say bar end shifters are out. A lot of older style brake levers (http://www.nashbar.com/profile.cfm?category=69&subcategory=1014&brand=&sku=12401&storetype=&estoreid=&pagename=) have shorter reaches than newer sti's. They can also be shimmed a lot more to bring the levers in closer to the bars. You can mount those levers and bar end shifters on the bars you're looking at.

I can see what you mean, bar end shiftres in the ends of the TT bars. Sorry, this won't work either, her arms are not long enough to reach the bar ends.

Also, shifting up from small-middle-large chainring, she can use the tips of 3 fingers, this is one of the big advantages of STIs over Bar End or Flat Bar shifters, a selling point for this particular road bike, other points being the Cyclocross levers, 400mm short reach drop bars, 85mm stem, 650c wheels, 165mm cranks all as standard.

She also rides a MTB (24" wheels, 12" frame) and has gone from Flat Bar EF35 shifters to twist grips as they require less efffort in up shifting the chainrings and down shifting the cassette. The Bars on her MTB are cut down to around 500mm.

I used to have a tri bike with 105 STIs on those "cowhorn" style bars. It actually worked pretty good. I ended up putting regular drop bars on it along with bolt on aero bars because I was doing more road riding than tri riding anyway. So yes, it can be done and it will work out OK.

Thanks heaps for the replys.

I went to my FBS today and we looked at bars and levers. It seems the 8 speed Sora is not suitable for this conversion. The STI s with the paddle return are ok, but the STIs with the little button are not suitable, it goes down at the wrong angle.

I don't think my friends budget will extend to ST-R600 lever sets, best choice. We will experiment with the position on the bend with the current lever set when things calm down in the FBS, after IM/2. 😄