Another one of the tweaks that I wanted for my Brompton was to bring the handlebar height down roughly to saddle height. I decided to fit a Joseph Kousac mid rise bar.
Here is a comparison with my 2017 M Bar. Not only does it have less rise, but the shape is subtly different.
Here is the comparison with the bars held up against the bike.
In the folded position, the larger width of the mid rise bar is not going to be a problem.
The biggest difference is the sweep back between the two bars. The 2017 M bar is not planar either: it has a slight sweep back, but I would say that the Kuosac bar has roughly double the sweep back of the stock bar.
Weight comparison: the Kuosac bar is 14 g lighter. Also, measuring with callipers reveals that the stock bar has a wall thickness of 2.1 mm, whereas the mid rise bar has walls that are 1.45 mm thick.
The bars were too wide for my taste. It is handy that they have markings to make it easy to cut the bars down symmetrically.
All done.
You can see them installed in this picture from my previous post.
So far I can’t really tell if there is an enhancement in comfort, but I do like the lower position. I can’t tell if the bars differ in stiffness from the stock ones.
Ordering was very simple from eBay.
I’m thinking of doing the same, and wondering if this handlebar swap required any adjustments to the cable length (or any other issues to anticipate)? Thanks.
it did not.
Very useful. I have the same Kuosac bars and plan to fit them on my 2019 S bar brommie to give a bit of extra height. It will mean fitting new cables too.