QR50 - Handlebar survey

Regular readers will know that the kit of parts did not include an original set of handlebars, which throws up a couple of problems relating to the rear brake lever and the size of the bars themselves. We'll talk about the rear brake lever another time, but if you take a look at these pictures you will see that the bars are much higher and wider than the original equipment:

We can see from the picture below that the original equipment bars rise maybe half the distance from the top yoke to the bottom yoke. On my bike, you can see this rise is almost as much as the full yoke to yoke distance. Reducing this height would mean losing the brace.

The additional width is simply outrageous:

The original bars are actually welded to a sheet metal cradle that bolts to the top yoke - they don't use the clamps my bike has. In these two pictures, you can also see that the ends of the bars are more or less the same length as the seat width - mine are much longer.

The bends above the top yoke are inboard of the stanchions on the original bike, so the centre section between the clamps would have to be reduced. This would mean losing the clamps.

So, there's quite a lot of work to do to get these anywhere near original.