Old drop bar bikes and riding position.

[Trigger]

So, on older drop bar touring bikes from yesteryear what was the preferred hand position?

There were no 'hoods' to speak of so this couldn't have been the primary position, so does that mean you rode on the drops mainly? If so that seems a bit 'racey' for touring/day rides, am I missing something? Even with the stem at full extension the drops would still be considerably below bar height so how was this comfortable for long periods?

Excuse the ignorance but I am but a whipper snapper around these parts so wasn't around when these were ridden.

[tatanab]

Hoods were shorter than modern STI/Ergo hoods but that did not mean it was not a useful and comfortable position. Another point to consider is that modern levers tend to put the hoods flat as extensions of the tops of the bars whereas older style levers fitted further round the bend. Also the fashion was for much deeper drops than modern days especially modern compact drops; and the tops of the bars were higher than is the modern fashion, typically an inch or a little more lower than the saddle.

My hand position is the same as I used in the late 60s. Hands tend to be just behind the hoods or on the curve where they bend to the centre. I still use the drops very seldom.

[Mick F]

Nice idea for a comparison.
Here's two shots extracted from photographs.
One from the early 1990s and the other from 2005.
Campag Victory vs Campag Ergo.

Same bike, and same Cinelli 64 handlebars.
You can see quite clearly the differences.

Victory.jpg (25.79 KiB) Viewed 5545 times

Ergo.jpg (19.82 KiB) Viewed 5545 times

[Brucey]

There were no 'hoods' to speak of so this couldn't have been the primary position....

Hoods were commonplace in the 1960s but are not often seen these days on older bikes from this era. Why? Because they rotted and fell off, possibly.... The levers themselves were designed to work OK without the hoods if necessary. Plenty of riders would simply tape up the lever bodies with cloth tape

Mafac levers had half-hoods as a option for many years;



In the 1950s and 1960s racing drops were deeper; arguably they needed to be, because the fashion was for larger framesets in those days, and it might be difficult to get low enough otherwise. And where racing leads, touring often follows, even if you then don't use the drops much.

[BTW If you are of average height and ride a medium-weight steel frameset (lets say 7 or 8 lbs) then there is much to say for a larger frame; smaller ones in such tubing are often unpleasantly stiff; I think this helps to explain why larger frames were popular back then. Many frames were made in such tubing because really thin-walled lightweight stuff was still rare and expensive. You would have found it difficult to ride a smaller frame anyway; seat pins of any length appear not to have been available.]

A generation earlier drops were not as extreme and a welter of shallower bars were used, often with the drops as the default position, and brake levers meant for flat bars. No hoods to ride on, really, although the lever bodies were often taped up. These bars work well on bikes with (between the stem and the frame) a short reach to them.

I started riding drops in the 1970s and my default hand positions (for touring on drops) are pretty much as Tatanab describes. The hoods (+ bent elbows) are for headwinds and the drops are mainly for descending and full-on sprinting.

cheers

[drossall]

How long ago are you talking about? There's been no change, except in the shape of the hoods (and that bars are a bit wider) since I started in the late 1970s, and riding on the hoods was normal long before that.

Here's a 1982 Holdsworth Mistral that I recently bought on here. It's all original (except consumables), including the hoods and levers.

[eileithyia]

Ever since 1978 I have ridden usually ridden on the hoods....

[1942alexander]

This first photo was taken in 1959. I was racing in a TT at the time so was on the drops but with only one brake lever, (bare metal,) it would not feel balanced to ride just holding one hood so unless you were covering the brake lever you rode on the bends or on the tops on the straight bits of the bars. When I had both brakes fitted I rode holding them and I can still remember how cold they were on a winter's club run. The bar combination was a GB spearpoint stem and GB Maes bars with the scalloped collar with a weinmann brake.

The second photo is of a bike I bought and built in the winter of 1959/60. It was my road racing bike with lower bars "south of France?" to try to lower my racing position. It was a total failure as it restricted my breathing so I reverted to riding on the hoods, which by then had what looks like two turns of tape round them. These were Mafac levers so it looks like this was the period before the half hoods were invented, or possibly became available over here. I might add that the two turns of that very thin bar tape did absolutely nothing to improve the comfort of the ride.

BarsHJQ.jpg (9.81 KiB) Viewed 5390 times

The last photo is of a mid 1950s Holdsworthy which I have just restored as a modernized retro because I want to ride it rather than just look at it. The stem is a GB spearpoint with Sakae bars (very Maes like.) For comfort I have used some later Mafac levers and leather tape on the bars. I will ride this bike mainly on the hoods.

[NATURAL ANKLING]

Hi,
Blimey.........yeh......my school days PVC tape and bare metal hoods, great with woolie gloves

Then tape on the hoods and Cloth Tape Wow.
Handle bars were cold in them days

I think modern randonnuer bars are kinder on the back for us oldies, last time I jumped on the tourer I had a head wind so used the drops alot, then chased down a roadie and a quick 12 mile off road MTB course, then home into a head wind, shattered.
Next day my abbs were killing me, all that drop work into head wind then gripping the bars to stay on, and to use the brakes effectivly for off road you have to be on the drops.
I tend to swap around a lot, hoods are for climbing or for boy racers

[drossall]

Slightly OT, but I'd love to see more pictures of that Holdsworthy.

Just to reinforce that the hoods were used, common practice on a fixed wheel was to remove the pivot on a second Weinmann lever, allowing the lever to drop out of the hood. Then you put the pivot back (because the mount bolt went through the middle of it), giving you a hood with no lever in it (remember that levers had no springs, so a lever not connected to a brake would rattle, hence the need to remove it). That would have sorted 1942alexander's problem.

Alternatively, you could buy "hoods" such as these:

[drossall]

Hoods were commonplace in the 1960s but are not often seen these days on older bikes from this era. Why? Because they rotted and fell off, possibly....

I've just discovered these replacement hoods, also in black.

Slightly more extreme, but apparently Grand Bois in Japan do reproduction hoods. Don't know anything about them though, except that they are probably rather more expensive than the Cane Creek ones.

[1942alexander]

Slightly OT, but I'd love to see more pictures of that Holdsworthy.

Happy to show you more. These were taken today. I finished the refurb just yesterday.
Please excuse the fact that I have gone off topic for just this one post.
This is how it was when I bought it.(Through this site in the "Wanted" section.)

...and this is how it looks now :-

Limit reached... another three photos to follow.

[1942alexander]

Remainder of photos...

Hope you like the restoration.

[freiston]

Not sure if this counts as yester-year, but here's a picture of my bars and levers circa 1980. The photo is bad, the handlebar tape needs replacing and the position of the levers and the bars are not 'conventional' (but are intentional). The levers are Mafacs and I did almost all my riding on the hoods, with a close second on the ramps, with a bit of on the tops, a bit in the hooks and a bit on the drops.

You can't tell from the picture, but the ramps are quite long compared to modern bars. I found the position of the bars and levers gave me very comfortable and varied positions (and I had no trouble operating the brakes).

[Trigger]

How long ago are you talking about? There's been no change, except in the shape of the hoods (and that bars are a bit wider) since I started in the late 1970s, and riding on the hoods was normal long before that.

Here's a 1982 Holdsworth Mistral that I recently bought on here. It's all original (except consumables), including the hoods and levers.

That looks so uncomfortable, the levers are so far around the bend, how can that even be possible to ride for more than 10 minutes?

Maybe I just don't get it but most of the pics posted look uncomfortable with the old levers around the bend of the bars.

All except for the last pic with the bars twisted and the levers further up look painful.

[tatanab]

That looks so uncomfortable, the levers are so far around the bend, how can that even be possible to ride for more than 10 minutes?

Look/appear/seem uncomfortable, but have you tried it - especially when that size of hood was the only one in town? It was no problem at all and I rode many thousands of miles like that as did everybody at the time.

All except for the last pic with the bars twisted and the levers further up look painful.

Six shooters we called them and you would have taken some stick from clubmates if you had levers in that position, sticking forward to stab other riders. For my taste it would not work because my wrist does not naturally fall into that sort of angle.

The pictures by 1942Alexander are a snapshot of what most of us club riders used as club hacks/touring machines right up until probably the early/mid 90s when fat tubes, STI/Ergo etc appeared. Typical of the times when almost all of us assembled our own machines.

Here's one of my modernish machines that happens to fitted with an early aero lever and you can see that even in about 1985 (estimated age of lever) the hoods were quite short and the lever fitted further round the bend.