Bike Ahead has a new lightweight, ultra-premium The Unit ICR 1-piece carbon mountain bike handlebar & stem combo for riders looking for an extra sleek cockpit setup. With boxy, angular styling to match your spoked BiTurbo RSX wheels, the German carbon experts at Bike Ahead tuck your brake lines out of the way for the smoothest internal routing into the headset of your modern trail bike.
Bike Ahead The Unit ICR ultralight 1-piece MTB cockpit
Taking their already lightweight, manta-inspired The Unit combined carbon mountain bike handlebar and stem to the next level. Bike Ahead created an even lighter version with integrated internal cable routing channels. They call this new 1-piece carbon The Unit ICR bar+stem combo. “The perfectly integrated cockpit solution” for the high-end modern mountain bike. It’s even rated for enduro an eMTBs!
It’s now a surprising 10% lighter, while routing cables into the bar just 80mm before the center, so they can then smoothly curve inside the stem, down into the headset. Of course, since mountain bike brakes almost exclusively have external hoses, you’d want something like the latest SRAM Stealth brake levers or another brake like the Trickstuff Piccola that allows you to adjust the angle of the brake lines to tuck closely to the bar.
But with more and more bikes featuring cable routing through their headset, this looks like one of the most tidy setups you can get when money is no object.
Picking the right MTB bar for you
This new Bike Ahead bar is all about creating a sleek and lightweight mountain bike cockpit, shedding 16g off the previous version without internal routing. It’s super expensive, but claims to balance its light weight with ride-tuned stiffness.
Does your mountain bike bar need to be ultra-light or ultra-stiff? Earlier this year we took 42 different MTB bars out on the trail, then into the test lab to empirically see how material, clamp diameter & rise affect how your mountain bike rides. If you haven’t checked that video out, you really should. I think the big takeaway was that stiffness wasn’t the only metric you want in an MTB bar. But even the most expensive bar in that test was less than 1/2 the price of this unit. Although we didn’t test any 1-piece bar+stem combos.
Now, we didn’t include any Bike Ahead bars in that test. And we’ve not laid hands on this new Unit, so let’s take a closer look at what sets it apart…
Tech details
- handmade in Germany from UD carbon, with raw unpainted matte finish
- ultralight carbon layup optimized for “good damping with the best possible torsional stiffness“
- weight claims from 199g (44mm stem x 800mm wide) up to 210g (77x800mm)
- ICR internal cable routing compatible
- 2 cables/hoses per side making it work with mechanical or electronic shifting, dropper posts & brakes
- designed to work with 1.5″ Acros IS52 integrated routing headsets
- 9.5° backsweep
- 0mm rise for all sizes, except 15mm ride for the shortest 44mm virtual stem
- 4 stem sizes available: 44mm x 0°, 55mm x -4°, 66mm x -8°, 77mm x -10°
- titanium stem clamp hardware
- No-Slip brake lever clamping area treatment for lower required clamping pressures
- includes integrated top cap & steerer tube spacer
- direct face-mount, 9.5g out-front GPS mount available separately for ~140€ more!
- ASTM4 standard tested, approved up to enduro & eMTB use with max 130kg rider + gear weight limit
Bike Ahead The Unit ICR MTB handlebar – Pricing, options & availability
“Maximum tidiness and super light.”
The new Bike Ahead The Unit ICR integrated MTB cockpit sells for 639€. That’s 90€ more than the regular external routing Unit. It is wildly light though, and made entirely in-house at All Ahead Composites HQ just outside of Würzburg, Germany.
Four stem sizes are available now (44, 55, 66 & 77mm), each with its own effective stem angle and bar rise, but all 800mm wide. Just don’t forget, if you want the ultralight out-front GPS mount, it’ll add a shocking 20% extra cost to the price of this bar!
