Weight Weenies

I'm currently running the stock 42cm Profile Design Basebar (Wing T2 with a standard 31.8 clamp area) on my tt bike and after i downsized the bar on my roadbike from 42cm to 38cm i'm thinking about going down on the tt as well as i'm riding in the aerobars most of the time anyways.

Currently it looks like there are not many offerings on the market which are less than 38cm wide except for the Profile Design 10A which is cheap and available in 36cm.

My questions are:

a. did anyone do such a change and did it improve aerodynamics? On one hand the difference should be smaller than on a roadbike as the basebars are not used much, on the other hand tt bikes are going much faster so maybe there still is a significant difference.

b. are there any other good offerings of 36cm bars that i haven't found yet?

Wattshop makes one that's 35cm outside-outside, but it's pretty expensive

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cberg wrote: ↑

Tue Dec 06, 2022 2:43 pm

Wattshop makes one that's 35cm outside-outside, but it's pretty expensive

Yes this one looks great but is as expensive as my whole tt bike...also i would prefer a bar that allows to reuse the standard 31.8 clamped extension brackets. I use a pretty narrow position with my exensions which is a lot easier to achieve if the brackets can be positioned freely.

But they also have blog post that shows the wind tunnel data:
https://www.shopforwatts.co.uk/blogs/ne ... on-testing

depending on yaw angle they measured differences of up to 10 watts even at 40 kph which is a lot in my opinion. Would be really interesting to find out how much of this saving is coming from the smaller size and how much from their aerodynamic optimization.

There was a 3ttt brezza nano which might have been 36cm, and ventus may have been available at 38 or 40cm.
Can't think of any others off hand

Brezza Nano was 30cm c-c, I believe. Check that one out.

Profile Design Wing 20c comes in 38cm

Thanks! The 3T Brezza Nano looks excellent but it is discontinued. But maybe i'll find a good used offer.

I really wonder why there are so few people using these narrow bars. I get that wider base bars may be helpful in very technical TTs like some of the Tour de France courses, but there are also many courses (especially in Triathlon) which are absolutely not technical and so long that even a few saved watts make a huge difference.

The Profile Design Wing 20c is also looking very nice but makes me think about size vs. aeroness again. Maybe the much cheaper (and less aerodynamically optimized) Wing 10a will be as fast or even faster because it is available in 36cm.

On a road bike most of the aero savings when switching to narrow bars comes from the rider. This isn't as relevant for a TT bike.
I'd probably consider the shape of the aero-foil and how well the bar integrates with the extensions more than the width.
If you look at what Dan Bigham (Wattshop) was using prior to their own systems being produced it was the Pro Missle Evo bars and they're 40cm... pretty confident he will have tested them extensively so that is what I would be looking at.

Profile Design Svet V also comes in 38mm and has a sweet looking (imo) drop

Nohands83 wrote: ↑

Tue Dec 06, 2022 7:06 pm

If you look at what Dan Bigham (Wattshop) was using prior to their own systems being produced it was the Pro Missle Evo bars and they're 40cm... pretty confident he will have tested them extensively so that is what I would be looking at.

That's what i bought in the end. I haven't done any proper testing yet but so far these bars do look like a pretty good upgrade for around 60 bucks. They do at least look a lot more aero than the previous Profile Design Wing T2 and allow much better cable routing (cable holes are on the back near the stem instead of on the bottom further outside).

Good choice. Depending on what bike and groupset you have, you should be able to run them fully internal with a Profile Aeria Ultimate stem as well.

Nohands83 wrote: ↑

Tue Jan 10, 2023 8:59 pm

Good choice. Depending on what bike and groupset you have, you should be able to run them fully internal with a Profile Aeria Ultimate stem as well.

My bike is too old for that, it's a Canyon Speedmax AL 9.0 from 2014:
https://issuu.com/canyon_bicycles/docs/ ... highres/90

But it is much better now anyways:

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