I have a Cervelo R5 (previous generation) with the HB13 bar and ST31 stem. I’m looking to move to a narrower bar and would love to get some collective advice as to my options.
Right now, I have a 40cm bar and that feels about right in the drops for descending, but would ideally like something in the 35-38cm range at the hoods. I do also enjoy the HB13’s routing in a channel under the bars, but I would be willing to give that up and route stuff through the bars if necessary.
Some of the stuff I’ve considered:
38cm HB13 - doesn’t really seem like enough of a change to be worth the hassle/expense of hunting one down
Enve SES Aero - looks great with the caveat of the internal routing noted above
Zipp SL-80 - looks nice and similar routing to HB13, not sure if the R8120 hoods would mate perfectly as appears to designed specifically for the new SRAM Red?
Would love to hear other options or if you have experience with any of the above. Also curious to hear whether I should be considering a 1cm longer stem if I went to much narrower hoods.
I believe Ronan shared a thought in the Discord about channeled bars along the lines of needing mm precise hose length since there is nowhere to shove excess hose length into.
I personally don’t like the Zipp SL-80, nor did a couple of my friends, nor a bunch of other Discord users! YMMV but the shape caused us some wrist interference when sprinting in the drops. If the bar ends are horizontal or close to horizontal, there’s a notable negative “ramp angle” leading to the back of the hoods, creating a valley as you transition from tops to hoods. If you roll the bar up to minimize or eliminate that valley, the effective reach of the bar increases to ~90-95mm (a fit consideration, up to you whether that is an issue)
FWIW, I mocked up GRX levers on some SL-80 Race bars a while ago. I don’t believe lever compatibility is an issue here.
@kuotient thanks for the reply and very good intel. Also good call on the hose routing; I was mostly hoping to not pull my whole bike apart (again!) but sounds like it might be required either way.
FWIW I think Zipp SL70 (of all permutations) is the perfect bar shape. The problem mentioned about with the 80 is solved by the shorter reach—you will have zero problems sprinting with these bars. Annoyingly however they don’t make the SL70 aero in 36cm (c’mon, Zipp!). Can’t speak to any of the others as they (to me at least) lack that ideal geometry and would force me to use shorter stems than I like.
