Is anyone else hyper sensitive to cockpit setup?

I'm not sure how much of it is psychological, but it feels like 10mm, maybe less even, of bar height up/down, or fore/aft, makes the difference between a bike feeling "ehhh" and "extension of my body". 

When I get the height and length perfect, I'm a different rider. 

On demo bikes or if I try a friends bike it seems I'm expect it to feel odd and I'm not so picky, but on my own bike, it's like princess and the pea. That last 10mm. 

Am I nuts?

I think 'cause we're all punters it bothers us so much? Pro DHers profoundly change setups as a matter of routinenit it seems. 

I moved 5mm of stem spacers down last month and honestly felt like I was riding somebody else's bike. 😅

Just swapped out for a *5mm* longer stem this week.

I find that I adapt relatively easily to different bar/stem/spacer setups within a reasonable range but the one thing I always have to have right is brake level / shifter / dropper remote placement. On any demo/test/rental bike I pretty much always have to move the brake levers inboard and the shifter & dropper remote outboard. Usually also change their angle. If I don't do this the bike feels practically unrideable to me.

Not at first but definitely yes. The first couple of months on a new bike are an endless process of experimentation. Is it the bar rise, the stem, the spacers, then in which order and how much. And that choice affects seat setback and tilt. It's pretty amazing how tuned-in to a bike you can get. It also makes me a lot less likely to switch bikes as often.

When I had a winter bike and a summer bike it was always hilarious pulling the unused bike down after ~6 months and jumping on it then having it feel all weird and need a bunch of tweaks to be comfortable. Obviously when I hung it up it fit me great and I was happy on it, but stuff changes in 6 months.

Yes, finding the sweet spot makes all the difference.

I hear ya brother.

Bar roll is the big one for me. If that's off, particularly if the bars are rolled too forward, the bike feels weird.

I seem to adapt to different stack heights ok and I do like the position of the controls to be "just so" but my biggest OCD is stem not parallel to the centreline of the bike (i.e. bars not being exactly 90° to front wheel)

Oh, and I ride with my brakes moto-style so that's the first thing which gets changed (even before I pick a new bike up from the shop)

Long scrap of straight 1x against the fork stanchions to sight the bars against, did wonders for my OCD in this department.

Posted by: D_C_

Bar roll is the big one for me. If that's off, particularly if the bars are rolled too forward, the bike feels weird.

Yeah, and the wierd bit there is, say you install a 10mm longer stem and then roll the bars back so they're in essentially the same position as before (with high rise bars it does not take much to move the grips 10mm).  Will feel totally different (to me)

So it's not even just up/down and for/aft, but what the bar roll ends up being when you arrive at that position.

I got my ripmo AF to the magic place and I still miss that perfect cockpit feel. I could not get my Raaw Jibb to feel right no matter what. 

Now with my rascal I am very close to finding the sweet spot, but I was reflecting on just how persnickety the process is (or how persnickety I am).

I was more adaptable when I my fitness level was higher.

For me the key thing is having enough room between the grips and the levers/shifter/dropper remote. Almost every bike I test ride has the brake levers way too close to use one finger (and generally I find that shops have the brake levers pointed down much farther than I like). Then the dropper lever/shifter is way too close and jams against your hand on the grips too.

On a related note, I helped my gf set up her bike and it was absurd how bad the cockpit setup was for a 5' 5" woman. She had lock-on Oury grips she literally couldn't wrap her hands around - I noticed that she used a false grip at the end of rides when she got tired, good thing she never hit anything hard enough to blow a hand off! The reach was set pretty far out on her brake levers so she could barely get to them, and her bars were so wide her elbows were locked out. I think that most women are riding bikes with cockpit setups way outside of the optimal realm since every new bike comes from the factory with pretty wide bars these days and shops don't think to get them dialed in. I saw a woman last weekend at Post Canyon riding 800 mm uncut Chromag bars, and she was probably shorter than my gf!