 All in one tri-bar system… |
 Bars give bike aggressive look |
Pro Missile Aerobar £441.42 (15%VAT)
Aerobars, as fitted to lo-pro time trial and triathlon bikes, have become progressively more sophisticated over recent years, their design and construction forced by the current importance of time trialling in pro bike racing.
The state of the art right now invariably comprises something along the lines of PRO’s Missile aerobar: a roughly teardrop-section base bar with handles ready to accept brake levers allied to extension bars and forearm rests adjustable in pursuit of optimal positioning.
The Missile design actually comes in six variants: three shapes of extension bar plus two base bar options to offer pretty much any desired combination. Here we have the 42cm wide, centre to centre, flat base bar with ‘S-bend extensions; the alternative base bar has dropped ends and is just 38cm wide. Other extension shapes are straight and bent up at the tip. The centre bulge, given a coarse finish to enhance the grip of the stem clamp, is 31.8mm in diameter.
 Tiny frontal area |
 Extension clamp nut |
A large nut on the base bar moulding clamps each extension, which ‘telescopes’ inside the moulding to allow adjustment for reach. There is plenty there; the 182cm tester had to remove 20mm from each to get them short enough for comfort on minimum extension. The forearm rest pads provide considerable scope for movement, with four width settings available.
Control cables are given concealed routing with the gear cables exiting directly behind their extensions and the brake cables leaving via the underside of the base bar. This has a UCI-friendly chord ratio of 3:1 while the handles taper to a neat teardrop tail.
Initial setup proved easy once the brake cables had been coaxed through the bars. The large clamp nut needs a large spanner – a monkey wrench is good – and, being aluminium, needs one that is a good, snug fit to avoid ‘bruising’ the faces.
 Forearm rest width settings |
 Neat cable exit routes |
No surprises on the weight front; with all-carbon construction and aluminium ‘hardware’ this is claimed to average 475g for the variants of the dropped bar style. We fitted SRAM’s Rival brake levers and will fit matching shift levers once the transmission is sorted.
First impressions? The bike is very light, especially at the front. Positioning and ride comfort are both exceptional even in comparison to the home-brewed and carefully-dimensioned bars fitted previously. There is a fair degree of bump absorption from the carbon base bar. Air penetration is way better than with the previous bars, with frontal area pared to the bone and a nice teardrop cross section where it counts. First time out, the bars carried the rider to a top-10 open TT finish, so there’s plenty to come. Watch this space…
