I guess I kinda look at it this way…you have your boutique carbon like Enve or whatever. Then you have your “almost” botique stuff like race face, ritchey, diety, renthal, etc. etc. etc. Then you have your house brands from the big guys (spec, trek, giant) Then you have your house brands from the little guys (like for example the borealis carbon 180g bar https://www.fatbike.com/store/BOREALIS-CARBON-HANDLEBARS-p124047093). Then you have the stuff on eBay and elsewhere that is direct from the far east.
I mean…the borealis bar says it’s tested to their downhill standard…whatever that means.
What’s the difference between all of these things? Is there any way to tell? Is paying more a guarantee of better quality?
If you buy a name brand bar, at least you will get some testing and passing of ISO standards.
I note that Specialized just recalled some SL7 headset parts that could cause the fork steerer to break. If you buy no-name carbon, will you ever get a recall notice and replacement parts from China or a new fork? I’d guess not.
If you start googling things like ‘broken carbon handlebars crash’ you may be scared off carbon handlebars. They do break. It does seem somewhat rare. And occasionally someone gets their face smashed.
I ride carbon bars but I’ll only ride a name brand bought from a reputable retailer. People can knowingly or unknowingly sell fakes on ebay that is hard to distinguish from the real thing.
You know, this resonates with me. Imagine you are looking at a non branded eBay purchase vs. a name brand bar. Say you save $100 just to throw out a number. Now, you’d really like to have the bar tested, right? To do that you need to buy a second eBay bar and all of the equipment to test it. Well, hell, that’s gonna cost thousands and there is no guarantee you’d even know how to use the testing equipment. For $100 you can have all of that stuff done for you by people who know what they are doing. That seems like a pretty good deal.
There are areas where you can get direct from China items that by all accounts are the same quality as the big brand stuff. It’s just whether the risk of them failing is worth it and bars/stems are a high risk area (the highest?).
I absolutely hate the notion of buying from someone you can sue. It’s such a hideous aspect of (American) business these days. Though if you live there it’s something you can consider.
The posts I read were anecdotal and the ones I can recall quickly were on MTBR and PinkBike. I’ve been reading some threads recently about wheel components on several forums about ZTTO hubs and BTLOS rims. Basically DT Swiss 240 (best to put genuine ratchet in eventually) and high rates of user satisfaction for the rims and proper customer support for both. I haven’t seen anything similar for bars/stems.
Mt Zoom at 115g for a 750mm riser bar and a ~75g stem would be hard to compete with. Those are out in the real world and aren’t as expensive as ENVE or whatever. They are limited to XC though.
Not gonna lie, I read this thread and had a flashback to that Calvin & Hobbs. My undergrad education was in structural engineering but I told my boys the same thing just as a joke to see if they’d fall for it.
I have two chinese carbon MTB bikes. One HT and one FS. They both have survived crashes and many races for years. My 2019 Top Fuel on the other hand, I have warrantied a frame and two XXX wheels. Not sure the status of chinese stuff these days but my N=10 items were perfect. This was when I was ordering from “Peter” from Chinertown forum. I have 3 sets of carbon wheels and full carbon bikes.
Yes, although I’d add that companies like Winspace have earned their reputation for quality at a low price by delivering just that. If you are fine with no (local) customer service, then I’d have no issue recommending their products.
However, that’s different from no name products where you don’t know what company even is behind them and whether they product quality stuff. An analogy from the car world are OEM parts vs. knock-off parts. Even when they look the same and fit fine, knock-off parts could be made to lower standards and use lower-quality materials. The differences need not be obvious.
