![]() Or grip the hoods when accelerating uphill or when you need to be able to brake or shift at a moment’s notice. Rest your hands on the tops for climbing or casual cruising when you don’t need immediate access to brake-shift levers. Reach for the drops when sprinting or to gain maximum aero efficiency. The unique shape of drop bars provides multiple hand positions. 1 function, but drop bars are also where key cockpit controls such as brake-shift levers and GPS head units are mounted. “ Oh…this feels really nice.” Then I crashed and that was that.Your road, cyclocross, or gravel bike’s drop bars function as your bike’s command center. I only got into the drops a few times and when I did, my ears perked up, like a dog sensing a slice of cheese being unwrapped in the next room. That has me a bit conflicted and only more time will tell. ![]() ![]() The next most dramatic thing was the little ‘porch’, a flattened section right where the bend meets the brake hoods. It felt to me like a 43cm bar, if that makes sense. I also found it ‘felt’ narrower that the 44cm rating would suggest. The flattened section- the “porch”?- Not sure about that yet. The flattened bar top also was just right, not so extreme that it felt like I was wrapping my hands around an airplane wing, but offering dispersed pressure when on the ‘tops’. That slope to the bar tops was very comfortable, allowing my wrists to rotate ever so slightly to the outside, a more natural position. That was one of the first things I noticed on the FSA K-Wing AGX bar. She had scoured the internet to find a second one after first sampling the bar (do not know the name of it) as she found that slope to be kind on the wrists. I had only ever seen drop bars that rise, then slope down as they move away from the stem, one other time, and that was on a lady friend’s road bikes. The FSA K-Wing AGX from a “rider’s eye view’. The reach to the controls ended up about the same despite the forward sweep of the bar, so that worked out fine for me. I installed it on the Cannondale Topstone and wrapped it with some 3.2 Lizard Skins tape. I have the 440mm version and I weighed it at 211g. With 75mms of reach and 115mms of drop, it is in the compact camp. Looking at it from head-on, it looks like Batman shaped it. When I unwrapped it I thought this is either going to be really good or a gimmicky disaster. There is even subtle shaping in the drops as well as some flare. It also sweeps forward as it nears the bend at the drops and then has this little flattened section right about where the end of the brake hood would fall. ( Look for a review on the Ritchey Streem II bar bar in the series soon, Editor) Even that sloped section is shaped, flattened a bit but not as much as the Ritchey Streem II bar. It does not stay high like that, but rather slopes back down as it heads toward the bend. First of all, it comes out of the stem and, after a short section of bar, begins to rise. That was a first: A handlebar that needs a conference call. Looking at the K-Wing AGX bar, I was so intrigued by the shaping of it that I actually called my contact in FSA to talk about it. But meanwhile let’s look at this bar and see what is up, and then I will talk about my first impressions. All that is off the table now and any further testing will have to wait till late October. ![]() That I was willing to do such a change before a big ride like that says a lot about my expectations. And as I was debating this, I crashed on a back country dirt road and broke myself badly enough to sideline me for a couple of months.īummer, as I was very, very struck by this handlebar and was going to swap it over to my road bike and ride it from San Francisco to L.A., thinking that would be a great way to prove things out. I was riding along the coast of Central California on the Topstone project bike, contemplating sea otters and handlebar shapes, and it came to me that the FSA K-Wing AGX carbon bar just might be the most ergonomically comfortable drop bar I have ever used. Looking like some alien star ship, here is a head-on look at the FSA K-Wing AGX Now, here we will get a take on three different flared drop bars from Grannygear. Remember to refer to our “ Drop Bar Terms Defined” post to help you understand the descriptive terms used in our drop bar reviews. Once the realm of retro-MTB folk, and the odd person looking for something different, the flared drop bar has become ubiquitous and is almost an expected component on any adventure/gravel bike. One such thing that gravel riding has brought out from the depths of time is the flared drop bar. Introduction: The world of gravel riding has spawned a few trends and brought other trends back to life. A Tale Of Three Bars: FSA K Wing AGX – by Grannygear ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |