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Calculating saddle & handlebar position.

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Inbred:
I've had my saddle and bars in the same position for many a year, but recently I've started to doubt whether I've got it right...
The seems to be a plethora of ways to determine the saddle layback and handlebar reach, but no one definitive method.
How do you calculate yours?
Just wondering....
🙂👍

mickeg:
When it felt pretty good and I stopped having lower back pain, that meant I pretty much had it right when I could go 100 km without any problem, day after day on a long tour.  Height of saddle was largely based on lack of knee pain.  Sometimes I tweak handlebar height by 5 or 10mm with spacer changes.  I use drop bars on all but my errand bike.  And I have them all setup nearly identical. 

At one time I was using an adjustable stem (adjustable angle) so I could make quick adjustments during a ride to see how I liked the changes.  And a bunch of steerer tube spacers.  And that was how I determined what worked best for me.  I have over the years loaned that stem out to several friends so they could try different bar positions to see what worked best for them too.

My rando bike has a bit more reach than I wanted, when I built it up I did not realize that the bars I bought had a longer reach than most of my other handlebars, thus I got the stem length slightly off.  But that bike I just live with it.

Every once in a while I adjust saddle height, but I only make adjustments by 5mm at a time.  I leave a piece of tape on the seatpost so that there is about a 5mm gap between the tape and frame, if the gap disappears that means the seatpost moved and needs to be fixed.  I have several bike shoes and I suspect some shoes have a different sole thickness.

When setting up a new bike, I get the saddle set at the right height based on measurements from other bikes, saddle set back about the same as other bikes but maybe a bit more forward if for shorter faster rides.  Then from measuring other bikes figure out how long the stem has to be to give me the right reach.  That was where I got it wrong on my rando bike, the bars were a deeper reach bar than the other bars.  After getting that one bike wrong, I no longer measure from the saddle to the bar distance, I now measure the saddle to the brake hood distance so that I can take into account bars of different reach.  I put a stick on the hoods and measure to the center of the stick from the tip of the saddle.

Bar width, that is simple, I buy the widest bars I can find without them being those odd extra wide angled bars like some of the bikepackers use.

There is one deviation, my folding bike has a much shorter reach, so on that bike my bars are much lower so that my lower back has about the same amount of forward lean angle as my other bikes.  I have my adjustable stem on that bike so if I want to make a tweak to fit, I can easy tweak it.

Inbred:
Thanks Mickeg.
How did you get to your basic starting positions?

jags:
there's no point in guessing get a pro fit done and be done with it ;)


anto.

energyman:
Trial & error, after a couple of years trying I have finally got it just right.  Thanks to Thorn comfort bars, adjustable stem thingy and a £35 saddle from my LBS and a tape measure.  All my bikes are identically set up.
QED !

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