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

April 19, 2010
12 Comments

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

Mr. Chipps Chippendale

Singletrackworld's ex-Editor At Large

With 25 years as Editor of Singletrack World Magazine, Chipps holds the record for 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. Chipps stepped down as Editor in April 2026 after 25 years at the helm. He's now wondering what to do next, while riding his bike in the French Pyrenees, where he also runs some gites.

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12 thoughts on “Sea Otter: Easton’s new wheels, bars, stems”

  1. Lovely wheels, seems like these tough carbon wheels could be one of the few innovations that noticably improve both strength & weight. But not your wallet.

    Do we really need more stems though? Last time I looked on CRC there were at least 7456 different stems available

  6. The carbon wheels with the stencil writing look brilliant.

    But the ones with the solid writing look awful, IMO.

    The price of the carbon one in ££s will probably be more than the weight in grams though.

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