Seat height vs bar height?

[OakLeaf]

have some electrical tape to retape it at the ends afterwards...

You'll also need to remove and replace the electrical tape that holds the brake cable housings to the bars. Once you unwrap the handlebar tape, you'll see it - normally they're taped at the corners and again right inside of where the handlebar tape will cover them. Taping the housings holds them in place while you're wrapping the bars, and also keeps the housing from trying to pull the handlebar tape off from the inside.

to loosen the shifters so you can move them, pull that rubber hood thing at the top back towards the handlebar, and it'll expose a bolt head on the outside of the shifter... loose then, the shifter'll slide to whereever you want, then tighten it back up and then retape.

For Shimano brifters, don't pull the hood back from the top. As you look at the shifter from the outside, you'll see the beginning of a channel in the hard plastic part right outside the edge of the hood. This is where your 5 mm Allen wrench will go to loosen and tighten the clamp. You just need to pull the hood out a little bit at the side there, and you'll see the head of the bolt.


A torque wrench is a good investment for this kind of adjustment (including repositioning your bars on the stem, and the stem on the steerer tube), although obviously it's much less critical with alloy bars than it is with carbon. You want it tight enough that nothing is going to slip out of place at a critical moment, but not so tight that you're risking damage.

As long as you're careful, you should be fine. If you're not confident that you can do it by feel, count turns of the fasteners as you loosen them, then re-tighten them the same number of turns. That presumes that whoever tightened them last put the proper torque on them - which isn't always the case - but it's somewhere to start.