Will give that video a watch.
It’s like being trapped in a small room with a Just A Minute contestant speaking on the subject of handlebars. It’s kind of a response to a GCN vid comparing carbon and aluminium drops.
After some judicious skimming, the main points seem to be that:
1. Carbon bars – decent ones – are more resistant to fatigue than aluminium ones, but aluminium has improved since manufacturers stopped making them silly light.
2. Some carbon bars are made in three parts so they bond the drops to the tops allowing them to make different bars from some common parts – potential weak spot.
3. The most common failure point for carbon bars in an impact is at the rear of the stem clamping area. The GCN video features an impact test with force applied from above, but in most real life cases, it’s a frontal impact and the stem clamp area is where the force is concentrated.
4. Avoid stems with sharp edges to the clamp, there’s enough movement in bars to cause scoring in those areas and potentially weaken the bars. He suggests using a Dremel or similar to smooth off any sharp edges on the inside of the clamping surfaces.
5. He himself, he says, mostly uses carbon bars, but the advantage of a relatively cheap aluminium bar is that if you do crash hard, you can simply throw it away and buy a new one, whereas with an expensive carbon bar, the temptation is to keep using it.
6. X-rays are sometimes the only way to spot structural damage in carbon – and aluminium bars – and maybe worth getting done with an expensive carbon bar if you’ve crashed it.
Most of the useful stuff is around the ten minute mark.
Consider this a service to anyone who finds themselves unable to watch the entire video. There may be other stuff I skimmed past as well, but as I skimmed past it, I don’t know… it could use a serious amount of editing.
This is the GCN video btw:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0stL5Q9b_oo
How does video embedding work around here these days? Baffled 🙁
