Swap bars for a flat bar.

steve1978

Hi. I have a ribble CGR with shimano full 105 setup. As much as I love riding the bike my neck and back gate me for it.

I love the weight of the bike and the gears and brakes. So I’m thinking if I could put a flat handle bar closer to the stem of the bike it would change my seating position completely. The bike cost me £1600, is it cost effective to buy new handle bars, new gears new brake handles (hydrolic) and have it all fitted. It should I just buy a flat bar road bike new.

akh

You can definitely convert the shifting, I'm less sure of the brakes. Assuming the below works, the total cost of parts should be about £200, much of which you can probably recover selling the current levers. I have no idea of labour cost if you don't have the tools or knowledge to do the conversion yourself. To me that's absolutely cost effective compared to selling the bike and buying a new one. However, you need to be pretty sure this is going to resolve your issues otherwise you're just throwing good money after bad. If you need to reduce the reach that much and you're not already on the smallest frame they make, you may be better served with a smaller bike.

In terms of how you might go about it, Shimano make suitable flat bar shifters called the SL-RS700. The RRP for the pair is about £100, but I recently found them online for half that. Availability can be hit and miss. These shifters officially work with 11 speed road derailleurs so you shouldn't need to change the rest of the drivetrain (e.g. keep crank, cassette, chain, and derailleurs). I've converted a family members 11 speed road bike to flat bar with these and they worked great. They had rim brakes however, so I was able to use cheap Tiagra flat bar brake levers.

Your brakes, being hydraulic, are a little trickier. I've heard MTB brake levers do work with road callipers, but Shimano provide no official confirmation of this. You'll want some of the new-ish generation MTB brakes which use the same hose (BH90) as road, and so can be connected. Whether performance will be acceptable, I don't know. Levers like the BL-M6100 are in theory about £60-70 for a pair online but can be hard to find in stock. If you don't get all the necessary nuts and olives, you'll need to factor those in.

Bars and grips are as cheap or expensive as you want them to be, probably £30 upwards.

N0bodyOfTheGoat

Have you tried a high rise stem, or an adjustable stem such as https://www.chainreactioncycles.com/p/deda-elementi-adj-adjustable-stem ?

I use the above stem on my Cube road bike to lower the bar height, but when my lower back goes, I can raise the bars in combination with moving spacers under the stem.

whyamihere

@akh is right about the shifting, those flat bar shifters are the right thing to use. For the brakes, I wouldn't bother trying to make new levers work with your existing calipers. Just buy any MTB brakes. Clarks M2 for example, are cheap and get good reviews. You would also need a couple of adapters to convert from your flat mount frame to the post mount caliper, these are available from lots of manufacturers.