by Scott
I've been an off road drop bar fan for over 20 years. I first got turned on to drop bars on a MTB, back in the early 90's when a friend of mine and I spoke with a shop owner up in Whistler BC, who used the WTB drop bar. Kevin bought a WTB one and I managed to get a hold of a Nitto RM-3 bar for my Brodie Catalyst bike. I used that set up for off road riding and for daily commuting for over 10 years. In fact, those bars are probably kicking about my parents garage still.
So when we started working on the Piolet, I was quick to point out the need for an off road drop bar. My definition of an off road drop bar is a drop bar that is highly flared and has a shallow drop to it. We got the Dajia Far Bars in to test and I really liked it. I used it on single track, on gravel roads and on my mixed terrain tour of Iceland. I had the top portion lined up parallel with the ground and the hoods at about the same height as my saddle. I usually leave a bit of room to move the bars up, so I have adjusted it up and down a bit over the past year or so to try and get it dialed exactly right. I have a set of old WTB drop off road bars on another bike for comparison and I like the Far Bars more. The width of the drops is more then the WTB ones and I don't find my shoulders getting cramped. On the trails around Montgomery County and Fredrick county MD, I never had issues with the bars clipping trees either.
They come in
silver or
noir, so you can go silver for retro MTB builds or noir for a more modern look. The bars only come in the 31.8 mm clamp size, which would fit either our
tall stack stem or the
6 deg stems from VO. Sized 44 or 48 cm, the measurement is from the center of the drops where the brake lever fits.
Dirt drops rule, I wonder when the roadies will catch on. You could have made them 22.2mm in the drops and 23.8mm further forward to accomodate both road and MTB levers and shifters. The Soma Gator bar does this. The advantage of using MTB levers is that MTB hydraulic discs are a fraction of the cost of road hydraulic discs and are far more crashworthy, and, cable discs don't compare. I'm running and upside down north road bar on my Piolet with MTB hydros. The north road feels about the same as a dirt drop with the hands in the drops.
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