Radrunner handlebar adjustment

[handlebar]

Laugh-in used to show an old man on a tricycle falling over. A rider's arms and spine can form a sort of tripod to stabilize his upper body. With his handlebars almost in his lap, the base of his tripod was too short for stability. With the OEM setup, the Radrunner made me feel that way. I was an accident looking for a place to happen.

I could lengthen my tripod by turning the bars forward, but, as the manual pointed out, it's dangerous to have the hand grips too far forward or aft of the steering axis. As was discovered in 1885, the solution was to move the seat aft. That helped in other ways.

I needed some pressure on the bars for stability, but in some circumstances it could be excessive. Traditionally, you could raise of lower handlebars to adjust the pressure. The OEM Radrunner seat could be raised 30 cm, but the handlebars couldn't be raised at all.

Radio Runner told me about an extender. The minimum increase was 6cm. That seemed too much. At that height, I felt that I wasn't maintaining enough pressure for stability. Swinging the bars forward can increase pressure. The grips had been 5cm forward pf the steering axis. I swung them to 7. That was too much. The pressure could be unpleasant, and the handling was a little weird. I swing them back to 6. Perfect!

A centimeter can make a big difference, and that's only 2 degrees of rotation at the clamp. I couldn't make worthwhile adjustments without measuring. The photos show how I do it. I tie a shoestring between the centers of the hand grips. Then I align my eye with the steering axis and measure how far it is from the string. In the photo, it might look like 7 cm because the camera isn't quite aligned with the steering axis. It's 6 cm, my final adjustment.

[Radio Runner]

Looks good!

[handlebar]

Looks good!

Like the Schwinn Stingray, the Radrunner makes it easy to adjust the bars unsafely and hard to measure. The Stingray inspired Raleigh's Chopper. Schwinn didn't keep safety statistics, but Raleigh did. They found that kids were dying from oscillations when they went downhill. That sounds like misadjusted bars.

Now that I'm getting used to higher bars, I love then. I've set them 1/2 inch higher. Tomorrow I'll raise them the last 1/2 inch. For stability, I like to lean forward enough to put forward pressure on the bars. Higher bars mean I can apply forward pressure without much down pressure.