By Lennard Zinn
If there is one thing that we at Zinn Cycles are experts at, it is building bikes with the handlebar high above the ground. That is a function of the fact that so many of our customers are very tall. But it also can be because the customer has a back or neck condition that mandates a very upright riding position.
Riders with conditions like spinal or cervical stenosis, fused vertebrae, degenerative or congenital spinal diseases, undiagnosed neck pain, or hip-impingement issues often rig up their existing bike, like very tall riders might, with tall stacks of headset spacers (sometimes even employing homemade, wooden ones), and/or install steering-tube extenders to get their handlebars up as high as possible.
To get a feel for proper weight distribution between handlebars and seat, one of our tall riders added this wooden spacer. Don’t worry, he never rode it this way!
These setups can create strength, stiffness, and longevity issues, particularly for heavy riders. Other options that those seeking super-high hand positions sometimes resort to are retrofitting onto their existing bikes things like ape-hanger, high-rise MTB, or cruiser handlebars, adjustable stems pointing straight up, or forks with super-long steering tubes (like our Zinn Duro carbon fork).
As the handlebar gets higher, weight on the hands is reduced, and weight on the saddle increases. The hands also come horizontally further back toward the saddle. This has handling consequences; when there is little weight on the front wheel, steering and braking inputs are less effective, and on steep hills, the front end can easily come up into a “wheelie.” Sitting discomfort due to the shift of additional weight onto the saddle also mandates a wider saddle; a rule of thumb is a 1cm increase in saddle width (at its widest part, toward the rear) when going to a high, “commuter” position from a road drop-bar position and a saddle well-fit for that, and a 2cm increase in saddle width when going to a vertical upper-body position.
When I design a bike with a super-high handlebar, I adjust the steering geometry and chainstay length so that the bike we build will have a more balanced distribution of the rider’s weight over the wheels than simply stacking up spacers and steering-tube extenders would result in. And by making the head tube as long as it needs to be, with the top tube meeting it up near the top, we also support the fork steering tube all the way up, close to the stem, rather than having it wagging around, far above the headset.
Whether it’s, ideally, getting a custom or tall, Clydesdale bike from us, or it’s getting a tall fork, a glue-in insert to reinforce the steering tube of a non-Zinn carbon fork set up with a tall spacer stack, or a custom or high-rise stock handlebar or steeply-up-angled stem, we at Zinn Cycles have the products and experience to get you the high hand position you might be looking for.
Zinn Cycles mechanic Joe demonstrates an upright riding position on an E-Zinn custom E-bike, built for rider Neal Kimmel
