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This is great, really interested to see how it turns out.
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I step away from a thread for a month and someone's drilling bars to fit aerobars. I'm not a safety officer!
I want longer pads than are available off the shelf (because it helps massively with comfort). The ones on my red bike are home-made too, and the length of the forearm contact is about 300mm (compared with a standard pad of 125mm).
https://www.witsup.com/product-review-culprit-csr-arm-supports/
jakemcree
hippy
@scarlet
Haha - thanks for all the comments, everyone. Made me smile! Figuring out the design probably took more time than the carbon work, but I think that's always the case for prototypes and one-offs. And tbh, you can do (some of) the design work with a beer in hand. Which isn't so bad.
The lay-up is time-consuming because of the epoxy cure time (about 3h to set, but ~8-12h before its sandable). So realistically, I can only do one stage per day; sand and shape, mix epoxy, spread epoxy (and fibre, if that's involved) then make a coffee/do life stuff.
The deal with the aerobars... I probably haven't been very clear in what I'm trying to achieve there. Anyways, here goes... This isn't "just" a clip-on aerobar. I really like/want the elbow pads to have proper location at the sides and back. And I want longer pads than are available off the shelf (because it helps massively with comfort). The ones on my red bike are home-made too, and the length of the forearm contact is about 300mm (compared with a standard pad of 125mm).
But if I custom-make it, I can add other stuff into the shape, which again isn't possible off the shelf. Lights? (OK, so you can get Exposure TT brackets, but...) Bottle or gel storage? Garmin mount? Mini-bar? ;-)
I have found a between the arms bottle/gel flask is a game-changer for me; its right there, you drink as you ride, you can see how much you've had, its super-easy and requires much less dexterity when tired. The light is neat too, I'll show that when I get to that stage.
At the end of the day, its a bit of work. It was more work the first time when I was a complete noob; I've done two sets of aerobars plus some other odd "shapes". This time around, its faster. But I think (hope?) the extra functionality is worth it. And I'm hoping I won't need to call on amey's dentist...