How to reduce vibrations to handlebars on aluminium road bike

Question

Question: How can I reduce the vibrations to the handlebars on an all-aluminium road bike? Either to the rider's hands or to the camera, or both.

I have been riding an all-alloy road bike for the last couple months, and while its so much faster than the MTB its terribly tiring.

I've suspected that its a harsh ride because there are lots of buzzes and rattles that come and go with different road surfaces.

A recent night ride demonstrated the problem in pictures.... I have a gopro on the stem and here are some comparison shots.

Example Smooth Here's some tarmac which is less than a couple months old. Its really nice on which to ride:

Example Buzzy Here are two stills cropped to show lights at night. The road is chip-seal which is quite common locally.

A video at night time was no good, but here's a short clip showing the buzz in sunlight.

Hand interface I've tried

• Padded Cycling gloves - helped a little with the hands, but they were cold. I've been wearing my full hand cycling gloves with no padding.

• Hand positions - I'm 99% on the hoods, either near the bend or up on the brake hoods. I never use the drops, they're out of reach, and the tops only occasionally. On a long ride I might put hands on top of the brakes for some variety ("high hoods")

• Bar tape - I've fitted some bar tape which is labelled as "cork" but was really a diamond-shape of firm foam. This helped, but the hand position is now unnaturally squishy.

Yet to try:

• A shorter stem, the old one is 120mm long. Finding one is difficult because its an odd sized quill stem. Still searching.

• A replacement front fork of steel or carbon ? Seems like an expensive solution for an older bike.

• Lower tyre pressure helps, but I'm over 100 KG so I can't really go lower than 100 PSI on 25mm tyres.

• Replacement bars ? Would carbon bars be any better at damping the vibrations?

• Other suggestions?

Camera mount I've got one of these on my stem. There's a layer of dense foam underneath which helps a little.

There are other mounts like this one, but they have no vibration take-up mechanism, so I'm leery about dropping money on them.

Searching web sites like instructables.com has returned steadicam-type mounts for hand usage, but not for biking.

Summary: How to reduce the road buzz that is transmitted through the fork/frame/stem and the handlebars?

Answer 1

Besides double taping the handlebar, the wider the tires the less pressure you can use:

from http://oaksandspokes.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/pressurechart121405B.jpg

Also you can use slightly less pressure in the front tire than in the rear because this is the one that bears most of the weight, for example: your could try 87 psi in the rear and 80 psi in the front for 32mm tires.

I'm not very sure but I think that in old road bikes (from the 90's) you had clearance to put up to 28mm front, and 25mm rear tires.

Answer 2

I have an aluminium bike with a rubber dampener built into the handle bar, it's part of Specializeds range, not sure if there are general versions.

A suspension fork would iron out more bumps than a carbon one, but may not fit your bike.

I've taken videos from a handlebar mounted camera too and I think there will always be a lot of jolting that is impossible to dampen. Low light will make this worse.

I think the best answer is to use a helmet mounted cam, so the suspension system is your body and neck. I've seen some fantastic videos of the New York alley cat races and they all use helmet cams. They also need strong necks!

How much image stabilization can your camera provide?

Answer 3

In theory, wider (and possibly thicker) tires ought to help though that may be anathema on a road bike.

E.g. I have a aluminium "hybrid" without suspension, with 700x32 Marathon Plus tires, which don't seem to me especially "buzzy" (I do like padded gloves though).

If the tires were e.g. 32mm instead of your 25mm, that means the contact patch is bigger and so the pressure can be lower.

Answer 4

For your hands, doubling up on padded bar tape is a cheap solution which a lot of the pros will do when racing cobblestone or bumpy roads.

For video, I'd opt for an inexpensive helmet mount (straps preferably but sticky pads do work) but if you've got cash to burn then you could look at either a bike or chest mounted gimbal which will produce smooth video regardless of terrain.

Answer 5

Old question I know but still relevant, to reduce/eliminate the gopro shakiness try a k-edge or similar solid, one piece mount.

I tried all of the mounts shown above with poor results before trying the k-edge out front mount which secures tightly to the bars & provides excellent quality footage. There are too many moving parts in the gopro mounts & it's impossible to lock them down tight enough.

I also use the saddle mount with a hero session which again provides excellent shake free footage.

Answer 6

Updated - I have fitted two layers of new bartape in the hooks, and one layer elsewhere.

Padded gloves were moderately effective, but came with new problems like sunburned wrists and blisters on the web between my fingers. So I still wear my $4 gardening gloves but with the padded half gloves over the top.

The camera is still poor at night, but the image has been improved by removing some of the padding and clamping the mount directly onto the stem rather than through layers of spongy shock absorber. I think the foams let the camera wobble about more than mounting it hard.

Tyres, for other reasons, I changed the front tyre from a thickslick to something with a little tread. This has also reduced the perception of buzz.

Its still a heck of a noisy bike ride though. The only other options short of a new bike is a replacement front fork in steel or in carbon, and I doubt 1" threadded steerer tubes are available on carbon forks!

Answer 7

If the vibrations in your handlebars are so strong that they feel nasty, then you have too much pressure on your tires.

Every road/bike combination has an optimum tire pressure at which the tire has the least rolling resistance. If your pressure is too low, you deform the rubber too much, losing energy; and if your pressure is too high, your bike vibrates too much, losing energy.

With your light-weight bike and your slim tires, you seem to have too much pressure for the chip-seal roads that you ride on. Racing bikes are built for the smoothest roads, only, and the roads you ride on seem to be too rough. So, I would recommend to lower your tire pressure if you hadn't said that you are already at the minimum that you feel safe with. As such, the natural option is to put on wider tires that allow for lower pressures. This will very likely reduce your rolling resistance on those chip-seal roads.

Another theoretical option would be to increase the mass of the frame, especially at the front. Like a really, really heavy steel fork. Carbon will only make things worse. The heavier the frame, the less it follows the vibrations of the road. But I would go for wider tires, if I were you.