A little background info before my question.

I have a 2002 that had the curvy buckhorn handlebars on it.  The curvy sections made adjusting my windshield difficult, so I got some z-bars since they provide tons of straight bar for mounting stuff.  The ebay description said they are 6" Rise with a 8-1/2" Center Width. (tip to tip) measures 25". Angle of Pullback is approx. 15°.  I couldn't tell from the ebay pictures, but the pullback is somewhat down as well as back.

So I put them on parallel to the fork tubes and took it for a spin.  At that angle my wrists are bent inwards and the ligaments on the pinky sides of my hands start to hurt after only a couple miles.  

Back home I take a look at how to make my hands point more forward and settle on rotating the handlebars forward.  Go for another spin and the wrist discomfort if better, but the bike's handling feels odd.  Unstable I guess.  Slow speed maneuvers do not feel natural.  Point being, I don't feel as in control as I did with the stock bars.

While the z-bars are narrower than the stock bars, it doesn't feel like its the extra effort required is at fault.  Looking the geometry of the mounted bars, I notice that the grips are now a little forward of the steering tube's axis.  Could this be the cause of the changed handling?  Google is not helping out much, is there some unwritten rule about handlebar geometry?

Right now I'm thinking of just going back to the original bars.  Anyone have a better idea?  

26" is pretty narrow.  But it would be hard to find a handlebar setup for a 4 wheeler, snowmobile or seadoo that is as wide as 26".  They are usually around 24".  People don't change them out. They just adapt to them.   Most sportbike clip-ons don't span more than 24" either.  But that's the nice thing about MC handlebars is you can more readily change them to adapt to you rather than the other way around.  The extra width is nice leverage to have when doing slow speed maneuvers.

One my original '03 Savage, I found that the stock buck-horns in the factory set position kinda tucked my elbows in which didn't seem to give me the control that I wanted in the turns ... after Riding a friends S40 with the factory drags-on-pull back-riser setup, I felt like that Bike had much better steering ... so, I loosened the clamps on my buck-horns and rotated 'em forward, which raised the grips about 2" or so ... this un-tucked my elbows, straightened my arms and gave me MUCH better steering input!

justin_o_guy2 wrote on 03/07/09 at 22:25:35:


Did you forget to take your meds again cause reading that confused the heck out of me.

Thanks for the input guys.  I understand you justin!

I tilted them a little further back, we'll see if that helps the feel without bringing on pain like when they are in line with the fork.

I measured with my kuryakyn iso grips on, it is 27.5" from tip to tip.