I fancied lightening up my road bike so shopped for some carbon bars. I'm fussy re shape and only found 1 set I liked the shape of, they were cheap at $44 but not ridiculously light at 250gm so thought I'd give them a go.
They creaked under the slightest leverage in my hand before I fitted them. I complained with a video and got a refund, then tried to pull them apart, which I managed by hand. They came apart just here the levers clamp on, seemed to be made in 3 parts.
PHOTOS.APP.GOO.GL Is there a surprised emoticon?
Oof!
You were naked, weren't you?
Nasty.
Is it time for spoons?
I don't know why anyone would buy carbon from an unknown manufacturer from that site, its suicide.
40 bucks for a carbon handlebar? Just no.
When you can't even afford shoes, the saving is a risk worth taking I guess!
<div class="bbp-reply-author">mattyfez
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<div class="">Member</div>
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<div class="bbp-reply-content">I don’t know why anyone would buy carbon from an unknown manufacturer from that site, its suicide
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You don't know until you try
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Confucius once said “You buy cheap, you buy twice”
I had a no-name Chinese carbon flat bar on my single speed hybrid I rode round all the hills and cobbles of Edinburgh for years. No problems at all.
Selling if anyone is interested - £10. Think it is 600mm wide and a little backswept. Very light!
Always have a trusted dentist to hand
- sun tzu
I have some pretty old and scratched Easton bars. Tried to snap them by hand, wouldn't budge in the slightest. Sounds like yours were pretty bad.
Seen this happen to a guy in a road race. Luckily he had his teeth, but had to retire from the race
2 things i would never take risks with are bars and stems
2 things i would never take risks with are bars and stems
Forks?
2 things i would never take risks with are bars and stems
Forks?
Brakes?
2 things i would never take risks with are bars and stems
Indeed, I have carbon rims, and wheels are strong by nature, bars have quite different forces acting on them, so I opted for a good aly bar (see what I did there 🙂 ) rather than a cheap carbon one.
all for 50 grams 🙂
2 things i would never take risks with are bars and stems
<insert any part of a bike>
Why risk anything considering what could happen, my face is to sexy to want to risk deforming it. Yours might not be though.
I've got a Chinarello one-piece bar/stem thing as a reminder not to buy cheap tat. It looks like something I'd have made if "carbon work" was a subject at school.
Thank god it didn’t fail and skewer your foot
Carbon and feet in one video?! It’s like fetish Christmas in here tonight!
Good vid.👍
Going to look a bit closer at my carbon SixC bars after the crash I had not long ago.lol
Not surprised it failed to be honest, I mean what did you expect from a bar that doesn’t appear to have any spoons in? Not one!
I used some 100 gam flat bars that cost £15 for quite a while with no issues. However, always had that feeling that they were going to let me down so now use Easton carbon bars.
Spoons?? So last decade.
Forks are where it's at these days - get with the tines granddad :).
You'll all be disappointed to know that after consideration, I have decided NOT to re-glue them myself.
Will give that video a watch. Loved mattyfez's scientific analysis of handlebars 🤣
get with the tines
You've created a nice flared gravel bar though so not all doom and gloom
i'm impressed you did that with bare feet and hands, you know its gonna splinter!
Snapped a Ritchey WCS bar when I collided with a car at 20 mph. I think that alloy would not have snapped, but also that the energy would have destroyed my wrist more than the carbon did. The wrist is now steel reinforced.
I've got to say that's quite shocking - that price is cheap but not that much less than you can get some carbon bars online (maybe not drops). I would only buy through reasonably trustworthy sources, i.e. online shops selling brand names - doesn't have to be top names but at least someone who is putting a reputation out there that could be ruined by some failures!
At least they were knowingly cheap no-name (I assume) bars. Could easily have been one of the many big name brands on Ali that are fake and deadly.
I just assumed this was a standard STW foot fetish porn redirect.
Feet like a griffin!
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:
How does video embedding work around here these days? Baffled 🙁
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.
Were would you get this done ? And id you could how much would it cost !!
A&E department, for free? Just stuff it down your trousers and tell them you've broken your leg!
Good question. Google brings up an ancient STW thread which includes advice from Colin who works/used to work at Trek saying:
x- rays may show internal damage, but the only true test is a non destructive ultrasonic resonance test. This will be a 100% accurate
Or.. in Germany:
&nocache=1" rel="nofollow" >CARBON-BIKE-CHECK.COM cited in
CYCLIST.CO.UK which says: 'The process uses a combination of heat, ultrasonics and hi-resolution thermal imaging'.
The "2 things I never risk my life on" are:-
- Bars
- Stem
- Wheels
- Brakes
- Forks
Oh.. that's 5 things.
Yeah seeing internal damage on carbon is essentially a tricky endeavour.
Internal damage/small cracks on alu is similarly tricky to find within the bounds of the equipment most of us have available anyway.
I'll have to use the "floor mangling" test in future.
Not a good vid. 19 minutes of prejudice and no scientific analysis.
I think you might be the exception to the rule. The Chinese are typically better than the west at carbon fibre manufacture and are very experienced. There's obviously a line to be drawn somewhere about cost / quality and I think you've probably found it in those bars.
Look at the price range for carbon stuff in the UK. Seatposts*, for example, range from ~£30 to upwards of £300 with no obvious difference in quality and potentially made in the same factory. I'd be fairly relaxed about riding on cheap-but-not-dirt-cheap Chinese carbon (in fact, I do, on my Ribble...), especially having seen a couple of web-tours around the factories.
* Admittedly, that £30 seatpost broke last week and I've just replaced it with one costing £100. I don't know if the low price is related to the failure or not, but my replacement decision was based on the fact that I needed a replacement same day, hence paying through the nose at my LBS.