I have been fiddling with the ergonomics on an ‘08 R6, and that led me down the rabbit hole of clipon angle and offset. Beyond going with what ‘feels right’, is there any science, or at least knowledge through experience on the impact of bar position (offset) or swept back angle? While looking into this it seemed like a high percentage of WSBK/WSSP bikes used a lower offset option. It currently has Vortex clipons with the somewhat typical bar placement in front of the fork tube (roughly equates to 40mm offset). I feel like they are so far forward that it is easy to put more weight on the bars than desired. I see there are reduced offset, tangent, zero offset options available. Seems like it would feel better being placed back a bit more, less offset? From a feel standpoint, less swept feels better to me. I suspect the answer will be ‘do what feels best’, but in case I’ve missed it in my research, is there anything to all this?
sometimes you can flip the bar clamp around or on opposite side to have the clip on bar in the back of the forks vs front. It depends on how much room you have. Ive done it on an R6 & GSXr where the rider had a shorter reach.
Take a look at woodcraft. They make “Adjustable” clip ons that have helped me adjust the rider position
I am looking at the Woodcraft Zero Offset clip ons. They are the same as what others refer to as tangent offset, or roughly 20mm. Also very close to factory clip ons.
On my gsxr with renthal tangent tubes (20mm offset i think), the throttle and brake cables were a little on the long side... any closer and custom lines were probably needed.
More sweep will bring the grips closer to the saddle. So it’ll be easy to experiment with fore/aft position. Find a good position, then see if you hate the resulting sweep. If so, buy zero offset clipons.
Regarding the science part if your question, I started down the path of looking at what some basic "fit numbers" would be via cycling bike fitting software. I quickly shelved the idea as the task of developing a data base, along with creating a range of fit tankards was beyond daunting, let alone would have zero return. There are some basic ideas and I outlined them in a podcast a few years ago.... https://soundcloud.com/ken-hill-534763963/podcast-56-motorcycle-ergonomics-101
Sorry, fixed typos! Regarding the science part if your question, I started down the path of looking at what some basic "fit numbers" would be, based on using cycling bike fitting software. I quickly shelved the idea as the task of developing a data base, along with creating a range of standards was beyond daunting, plus the prospective market would have near zero return. Ken
Thanks Ken. This is an academic exercise for me at the moment. Been putting together a new to me bike and have not been able to get on track yet. Having grown up racing dirt bikes I likely have my own odd preferences. For me it starts with short legs. With typical peg positions my outside foot can’t touch the peg so I compensate by not moving my rear very much to inside. Next is the bars. Mine are such that to reach them I have to fall forward a bit which forces me to weight them more than I think is ideal. T-Rex arms? There is likely a core strength issue that is not helping, but I’ll set that aside for now. So my big principles are being able to move side to side while maintaining some contact with outside peg and having the bar/peg relationship such that I can have the weight on my feet and avoid weighting the bar. That is what perked my interest in the lower offset bars.
