I bought this bar to get some rear sweep in the grip area for my S&SUB. Over the years I have used more upright bars then I can keep track of, from super cheep to the Nitto Albatross (B-352AA is my Fav). The Wald offering comes in at about $20, they are chromed steel for high bling factor and they are made in the U.S.A.. They seemed like a worthy candidate for this budget build. My inital impressions are good. On the plus side they are comfy, cheep, made domestically, the straight front will not interfere with the load and they seem pretty strong. Downside is a bit of slide in the stem (possible stem issue), short grips and they are kind of heavy.
The dimensions are, 50cm wide tip to tip, 26cm of straight section in the front, 9cm of rise and 13cm of straight return at the grips. The return on the grips is almost straight with just a smidge of flare. The grips are really short, no room for levers and shifters at all. I have the brake levers here pushed as far into the bend as possible without the levers flaring out too much.
Overall I like these bars in spite of their limitations. In the application on this bike, single speeds or other times you will not need more than brake levers, these are a perfect and affordable upright bar. I would buy them again if needed and recommend them if they meet your needs.
As an aside, the keen of eye may have noticed my NOS Jim Blackburn parking brake. I am not sure if these are still made, but it is fantastic for keeping the bike still while loading.
Man, I’d love to have that bike.
Is it about a 58?
Love the setup.
And I have one of those brake wedges on my commuter/errand bike.
The cable grip broke in the cold, though.
Thanks Ray. It has turned out to be one of my favorite rides. It is a little bigger, 60 cm c-c, actually, the 58 is my next project for a friend.
I am replacing the drops on my 1981 Raleigh Rapide with a pair of Wald 8095 bars. I have downtube shifters like your Trek, and wonder if you have any problems leaning down to change gear?
no problem at all, and I am 6’3″, so it is a long reach. Altough, I will admit I have a set of stem shifters in good shape that are tempting me to try out. But the DT shifters are fine, even on hills with load, no big deal, they just work.
i know the center clamp diameter is 25.4cm (1inch) but do you know the diameter of the grip area? it looks a bit smaller, possibly 22.225 (7/8 inch).
Ryan, you are correct, 7/8 or 22.22 on the OD same as a standard MTB bar or the like. Since they are steel, and thin wall, you can still get a bar end shifter in safely too!
Hi there. Nice ride. I’m curious if you have a rule of thumb for converting road bikes with drop bars to swept bars like the ones here. Is it a given that upright bars should have much shorter reach in the cockpit? Is a good starting point for experimenting to use the same 10cm stem that the drops were mounted in? Would the approach change much if considering minimally swept flat bars closer to MTB style (or Soma Condorina, Jitensha/Nitto city bar, etc)? Thanks for any tips…
With the swept back bars like the Wald and Nitto Albatross I have always just used the 100ish mm stem as a starting point and it was usually OK. In some cases it ends up coming back a cm or two, but that is generally for a customer that wants to be bolt upright, not any forward tilt to the torso. With the partial sweep like the Jitensha the stem usually comes back to an 80-90 unless you are striving for an aggressive position. Is sounds counter to that style of bar but some run them inverted, low and stretched out.
The 867 turned out to be too upright and short reach for my preferences – sometimes you just don’t know a new layout until you try. That said, I discovered that the chrome is so slippery that my stem didn’t hold the 867 tight. I was able to push half a Nitto 25.4-26.0 shim into the gap in order to get the stem to grab the bars tight. The Nitto shim comes in two pieces, but only one was necessary for me…