A few novice questions about BMX bars

[mornview]

My wife recently got a Schwinn Del-Mar frame for next to nothing. After a failed attempt at painting the frame in the Schwinn campus green, she has decided to build a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles bike (!). I must say, the bike is coming together ridiculously well, but all I can picture it with is BMX bars (probably due to too much time on this forum). However, I have no experiene working with this style of handlebars, so a few rookie questions:

* Can BMX bars be installed on a traditional quill stem (25.4 mm clamp diameter)? Judging by the steerer tube it looks like I'm going to need a 22mm (7/8 inch) stem, which doesn't appear to have a whole lot of options.

* What size bars do you find comfortable as a grown adult? I'm sure alot of the second-hand bars on the market will be from children's bikes; I'm just trying to get an idea of what to look for.

Thanks!

 

[Bicycle808]

You'd need to shim the bars to run a bmx bar in a "normal" stem with a 1" clamp. The BMX bars will have a 7/8" diameter at the clamp, which in metric-speak is actually 22.2mm. As for the stem, I haven't ever monkeyed around with a Del-Mar, but it possibly takes a 22.2mm stem (7/8"). You'll want to get a bmx quill stem, most of which are 21.1mm diameter, and then get a Wald #905 shim, which costs a dollar, to fill the gap. If there's no gaps, no worries: just run the BMX stem without it, and use that shim on your other bike....

I'm a grown adult who likes my BMX bars with about 6" of rise and about 30" end-to-end, which is basically what a classic 26" bmx cruiser bar is gonna look like (eg, KOS bars, which were like 5.75" rise with 29" width.) Your wife is probably a grown adult, but she's probably smaller than me, so who knows what she'd like? Look for "race" bars, most of which are lower.... the typical BMX bars for 20" bikes have a lot of rise, which (to me) feels weird on a 26". A lot of ppl like'm like that, though. A "cruiser" bmx bar would be ideal, but most of these are costly when new, and scarce on the used market, at least as far as cheap prices go. But, the place to look would probably be bmxmuseum.com classifieds, or place an ad in the RRB wanted forum...

 

[mornview]

I knew I was going to get grief for that "grown adult" bit ... perhaps the better way to phrase it is "what size BMX bars do you find comfortable on a 26" cruiser?"

Thanks though Rob; that's exactly the info I needed.

 

[patman73]

use a riser bar & a removable cross brace ,like on a motorcross bike !

 

[mornview]

That would be fantastic. I'll send you a PM tomorrow (BIG exam first thing in the morning).

I must say, those BMX bars in a traditional quill stem look really cool. Since I've started thinking about going with a BMX quill stem, though, I think I've got my mind set on going that route.

Out of curiosity, what do you use to spread the stem? I'm new to all of this ... I just learned this trick yesterday:

http://janheine.wordpress.com/2012/01/17/inserting-a-handlebar-into-a-stem/

... but I understand you're talking about spreading the clamp WAY bigger.