Last Sunday I snapped my Race Face Six C 35mm carbon bars in a strange/mundane accident. I was riding along a trail on Cannock Chase that I have ridden a hundred times before obviously not paying much attention. My left pedal clipped a stump and I went sideways over the bars. It was a fairly innocuous crash so I didn’t expect to find any damage. On picking the bike up the right hand grip and brake lever came off in my hand with end of the bar still attached!

I conducted a detailed engineering investigation (I took everything off and looked it) and found that the brake lever had rotated round, slid down the bar, hit the shifter and broke that, jammed against it and then the force had twisted then end of the bar off.

You can see the marks from the brake lever moving in the picture below:

There are no marks from the controls on the left end of the bar as I am very careful not to overtighten them as I’d prefer the brake levers to be able to move rather than break off in an accident.

I contacted Richie Rowland at Silver Fish on Monday morning to ask if they would do a crash replacement. I had a prompt reply to say that they would and if I could send them the broken bar then they would send another out at a reduced cost. Richie passed this over to Scott Mann the Warranty Manager and after exchanging a few emails he had raised an order, I rang up and paid and the new bar was on it’s way before I had even sent the broken one back! I received the new bar on Wednesday before the new shifter and grips had arrived from CRC that I had ordered on Sunday.

If only all bike businesses operated like this there’d be a lot more satisfied customers around. Many thanks to Silver Fish for the fantastic customer service. It shouldn’t be the exception the rule but unfortunately often is.

TLDR Broke bar in clumsy crash, Silver Fish sorted me out pronto, happy customer 🙂

Blimey. Not impressed that the bars broke that easily. Good work by Silverfish (pretty sure it’s one word, it disturbs me to read them separately 🙂 )

What’s the cable running through the bars all about?

Looks like a lethal CF shard.

Shard. Good word that.

Oops Silverfish is one word 😳

It was an odd crash, the bar stuck in the ground and then my full and not inconsiderable weight must have briefly been on the other end of the bar judging by the bruise on my thigh. It’s one of those things and certainly hasn’t put me off carbon fibre.

The “cable” is a strand of CF. It wasn’t as shardy as it looks and was quite flexible.

Another Silverfish fan here! They sourced me a spare mech hanger for my Mondy Dune in about a day flat before my Alps trip this year! 8)