When I first heard about carbon fiber bike parts, I thought the main benefit of this material was weight savings. While that’s certainly true, I’ve since learned how tunable carbon fiber can be. When MTB components like rims and handlebars went to carbon, we started seeing carbon parts that were touted for their stiffness, compliance, or strategic combinations of both. Conveniently, they still often wind up being pretty light too.
OneUp Components’ Carbon Handlebar maximizes the benefits of carbon’s compliance and strength, yet they come in at a comparable weight to other brands’ carbon bars. While the bars were designed to reduce arm fatigue, they have a super-thick clamp area to resist crushing and are OK for any rider, with no specified weight limit.
During Crankworx Whistler I met up with Quinn from OneUp Components for some bike park laps. We swapped my personal bike’s aluminum bar with the carbon handlebar for some back-to-back testing on the park’s rough and fast trails. I got to keep the handlebar for a while after Crankworx, so I spent the next few weeks riding trails with it. We’ve also included it in our guide to the best mountain bike handlebars.
OneUp Carbon Handlebar – Construction:
The Carbon Handlebar is obviously made from carbon fiber, and it boasts a unique (and patented) shape that provides vertical compliance, but not horizontal compliance. This design keeps the bar from flexing when you’re pulling back on it, but allows it to help absorb bumps and vibrations from the trail. The goal of the Carbon Handlebar is to reduce arm pump and fatigue rather than provide a noticeably softer ride, so they’re designed to flex just enough to accomplish that task.
Looking at the handlebar from above you can see flat spots where the bar tapers and sweeps back from the clamp area to the grip area. If you look from behind the handlebar, you can also see how the bottom is flattened out in the same areas. You may also notice OneUp kept the 35mm clamp area quite narrow to encourage a little flex. None of this is very obvious without a close look, so the bars don’t look unusual on a bike. OneUp claims this bar offers 21% more vertical compliance than competitors, yet maintains 28% better steering stiffness.
One interesting thing to know about this bar is that it’s intended to be set up matching your bike’s head tube angle – apparently it feels odd if the bar isn’t flexing at the same angle as your fork is compressing. Thankfully OneUP has made this easy (somewhat…), with markings on the clamp area so you can align the bar with whatever angle matches your bike.
However, there are two reasons it’s ‘somewhat’ easy… number one is the markings are tiny and not easy to read unless light hits them just right! The aesthetic subtlety is nice, but I wouldn’t blame OneUp for making them a bit easier to see. Number two is that the bar markings are designed to align with OneUp’s stem clamp opening (as seen in my photos). If you don’t happen to run OneUp’s stem with the bar, there’s no reference point to line up the degree markings with, so it’s probably best to use a tool to check the angle.
Ride Impressions:
