Sea Otter: Easton’s new wheels, bars, stems

The engineers at Easton appear to have been rather busy. They’re coming out with a carbon, tubeless All-Mountain wheelset, plus new stems and handlebars…

Long and low. The 85mm stem.

There are two finish options. This black one and the champagne finish

Starting with the stems. The stiffness of a stem is based on the shaft size, so the bigger the shaft, the more it resists twisting (what with all these wide bars these days). The new Haven stem has a 40mm shaft to keep it stiff. It comes in zero degree rise and 55mm, 70mm and 85mm.

Weeny short 55mm stem

And 70mm. The idea with the bar clamp is that you tighten the top two bolt up until the gap is closed, then just tighten the lower ones (preferably with a torque wrench)

Easton's alloy rims that they launched at Interbike. Also tubeless and 1650g/pr

Easton’s big story for the Sea Otter was probably its carbon wheels. They use a ‘ballistic’ carbon fibre (their engineers helped invent bullet proof vests…) and they will come in two hub versions: A 15mm/9mm version or a 20mm version (that has a full axle, not just end caps). The bed it 21mm wide for good tyre stability and the wheels are warranteed  for two years. The rims are UST tubeless thanks to a clever spoke bed that inserts into the void in the rim wall and mushrooms out to stay in place. The nipples then thread into this. It uses ‘normal’ straight pull spokes.

Carbon freeride wheels. UST compatible. 1450g a pair.

Haven is a component group too - here's the carbon seatpost.

The Easton engineers are very excited about the Haven carbon bar. (There's a regular Haven alloy bar too). Both are 711mm wide and, at 265g the alloy 711mm ones weigh as much as the 685mm bars of old did. The big thing, though, is the carbon bars at 170g. They're the same width as the Monkeylite DH bar from last year, yet so strong that Easton had to extend its 'ultimate drop test' slide (where bars are dropped in a stem with 8kg hanging off each end until they fail) because it wasn't tall enough to get it to fail, making it the strongest Easton bar ever.

Here's the 265g 711mm wide Easton Haven alloy bar

Easton's inline alloy post - comes in 400mm length.

Here's the alloy Haven's in 'Look at me' black with big decals.

A 'real world' pic of the Haven rims that manages to make the rim look like it's a deep aero section. It isn't.

Another real world shot of Matt's new 55mm Haven stem...

For all our Sea Otter coverage – check our Sea Otter New Page

Categorised as:

Press Launch

Posted on: April 19, 2010

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