PressCamp 2013: ENVE Composites

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At PressCamp, ENVE Composites had a room full of fancy carbon road rims, aero bars and road stems on display, but our attention was drawn to the chunkier wheels at the other side of the room.

For 2013, ENVE has updated its mountain bike handlebars. The SWP (Sweep) and RSR (Riser) bars have gained another 40mm in width, bringing them up to 740mm. If that’s still not wide enough, then its DH downhill bars are 800mm (and still 245g) and all bars are designed to be trimmed, complete with cut marks.

 

From top: ENVE SWP, RSR and DH
No mistaking these bars coming down the hill.

 

And talking of DH, ENVE’s downhill rim, which has been campaigned by the Syndicate for the past couple of years, has now gained a 27.5in version. The 26in is still in production too. Interestingly, it’s designed to be run with inner tubes, despite the current move to tubeless in DH. The hook-beads of the downhill rim are very, very wide and rounded, to protect against pinch flats. The rims also use ENVE’s toughened resin system for increased resistance to damage – this is a resin that’s not used in the rest of its rims. ENVE reckons that it’s still the only full carbon downhill rim available (we can’t think of any others…) And why make it from carbon? Well, it can be made tougher than an aluminium rim, while saving weight. A downhill rim from ENVE weighs less than 500g.

Super wide, rounded hook bead to prevent snakebites.

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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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