Core Bike 2013: Hope Handlebars, Hoops, Grips and PFBBs

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Hope was at Core Bike with a selection of new products that, for the most part, had very little machined aluminium and no hydraulic oil. And, in a surprise move, it was even showing products that weren’t made 100% in Barnoldswick.

Before the ‘Made in Britain’ fans swoon, Hope is the first to admit that, while it makes CNC widgets very, very well, it doesn’t have the knowhow, or tooling for making handlebars (or not ones that would be any good, anyway!). It’s also not the first time that it has outsourced components and expertise. It’s carbon fibre brake levers have been made offshore since their inception. With that topic covered, let’s look at what’s new from Hope Technology.

 

The Techbar is a light, but strong, downhill and hard trail use riser bar. Available in three rises, it features a beefy 31.8mm centre section that tapers quickly once past the bends so that there’s plenty of room for your controls – especially if you use one of Hope’s Tech levers, which take up inordinate amounts of handlebar real estate.

Rather then just pretty graphics, Hope has printed numbers all over them
There are marks to enable you to precisely set up your angles and distances, rather than doing it by eye.
Bars taper sharply once past the double bend, which is 5° up and 7° back.
A full 800mm of tree-smacking width available

Hope also showed its new grips. Coming in black or clear, the locking collars are first CNC machined by Hope, then sent to someone else in the UK to have the rubber moulded over the top of them, leaving a locking grip, but without hard collars that some riders can find annoying.

 

Black or white. 30mm diameter

Hope also has a bottom bracket solution for press-fit BB owners. This ‘Press Fit 41’ BB will work with any normal 24mm crank (Shimano, Race Face…) and has two ‘cups’ that thread together. The bearings are integrated into the collar, so that’s your job done.

There's a shop tool to install it precisely. The tool weighs more than the BB.

Hope Hoops are proving more and more popular, all still built in-house. Hope now offers the Stan’s Arch EX rim and will soon be offering a 650B version (once the spokes turn up…)

Hope is also now offering Hope Hoops with the popular Stan's Arch EX rim.

 

Chipps Chippendale

Singletrackworld's Editor At Large

With 23 years as Editor of Singletrack World Magazine, Chipps is the longest-running mountain bike magazine editor in the world. He started in the bike trade in 1990 and became a full time mountain bike journalist at the start of 1994. Over the last 30 years as a bike writer and photographer, he has seen mountain bike culture flourish, strengthen and diversify and bike technology go from rigid steel frames to fully suspended carbon fibre (and sometimes back to rigid steel as well.)

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