Handlebar change intervals ?

Lou D'Amelio said:

Just curious to see what thge sages of the newsgroup say about
handlebar lifespan. The specifics - Deda 215 26.0 clamp now coming up
on about 4 seasons / 20,000 miles. Never crashed, used for training

and

Quoted message said:

some racing (if you can call Cat V pack fill racing)over good roads

by

Quoted message said:

a 185 - 190 lb rider. Time to pre-emptively change or just keep

riding

Quoted message said:

it ? Manufacturer's website no help. Thanks for opinions..........Lou
D'Amelio

My personal experience is: I bought a bike in 1998 with the TTT Prima
220 bars. Fairly lightweight. I changed them in 2000 because I was
worried the lightweight bars would break unexpectedly. I also wanted a
bar with longer reach. So I bought TTT Morphe bars. Still riding them
and will not likely replace bars pre-emptively ever again. My heavy
duty Nitto bars on my touring bike have been going fine for 7 years or
so.

Lou D'Amelio said:

Just curious to see what thge sages of the newsgroup say about
handlebar lifespan. The specifics - Deda 215 26.0 clamp now coming up
on about 4 seasons / 20,000 miles. Never crashed, used for training and
some racing (if you can call Cat V pack fill racing)over good roads by
a 185 - 190 lb rider. Time to pre-emptively change or just keep riding
it ? Manufacturer's website no help. Thanks for opinions..........Lou
D'Amelio

preemption is prudent as aluminum fatigues, eventually. also prudent is
making sure your stem does not have sharp edges to the clamping surface.
sharp edges cause stress concentrations.

iirc, ttt specify about 20k, depending on use. it's mentioned in the
literature that accompanies their stems & bars. and as someone that has
personally experienced bar breakage while pulling hard from a light in
heavy traffic, i can assure you the cost of preemptive replacement every
few years is /well/ worth it.

Lou-<< The specifics - Deda 215 26.0 clamp now coming up
on about 4 seasons / 20,000 miles. Never crashed, used for training and
some racing (if you can call Cat V pack fill racing)over good roads by
a 185 - 190 lb rider. >><BR><BR>

Just ride it, listen for sudden creaks. Deda does say yearly swap(dum if ya ask
me). Maybe a hbar a wee bit heavier, so that you don't worry everytime you put
any force to the hbar. Ritchey round ones, WCS are nice.

Peter Chisholm
Vecchio's Bicicletteria
1833 Pearl St.
Boulder, CO, 80302
(303)440-3535
http://www.vecchios.com
"Ruote convenzionali costruite eccezionalmente bene"

jim beam said:

iirc, ttt specify about 20k, depending on use. it's mentioned in the

Quoted message said:

literature that accompanies their stems & bars. and as someone that

has

Quoted message said:

personally experienced bar breakage while pulling hard from a light

in

Quoted message said:

heavy traffic, i can assure you the cost of preemptive replacement

every

Quoted message said:

few years is /well/ worth it.

20k as in 20,000 miles, 20,000 km, or 20 km?

I was always curious about how often to replace bars. I've been on
rides where other cyclist's bars broke but none have resulted in
crashes; all have been while climbing standing when one side gave way
instead of in the heat of a sprint.

The bars on my racing bike are 20 year old Cinelli Del Mundo's with
many 10's of thousands of miles on them and a dozen crashes. A couple
of crashes were hard enough that I had to straighten them afterword.
I'd say that I certainly earned a new pair of bars. Then again I have
a pair each of 20 and 30 year old Campy cranks that have held up fine
even though a certain person around here seems to break them like
toothpicks. I guess I'm just easy on equipment.
--
Bruce

Bruce Jackson said:

jim beam said:

iirc, ttt specify about 20k, depending on use. it's mentioned in the

Quoted message said:

literature that accompanies their stems & bars. and as someone that

has

Quoted message said:

personally experienced bar breakage while pulling hard from a light

in

Quoted message said:

heavy traffic, i can assure you the cost of preemptive replacement

every

Quoted message said:

few years is /well/ worth it.

20k as in 20,000 miles, 20,000 km, or 20 km?

thousand km.

i posted data from the ttt user manual here:
http://groups-beta.google.com/group/rec.bicycles.tech/msg/a137f4ebf223d9fb

Quoted message said:

I was always curious about how often to replace bars. I've been on
rides where other cyclist's bars broke but none have resulted in
crashes; all have been while climbing standing when one side gave way
instead of in the heat of a sprint.

The bars on my racing bike are 20 year old Cinelli Del Mundo's with
many 10's of thousands of miles on them and a dozen crashes. A couple
of crashes were hard enough that I had to straighten them afterword.
I'd say that I certainly earned a new pair of bars. Then again I have
a pair each of 20 and 30 year old Campy cranks that have held up fine
even though a certain person around here seems to break them like
toothpicks. I guess I'm just easy on equipment.
--
Bruce

Lou D'Amelio said:

Just curious to see what thge sages of the newsgroup say about
handlebar lifespan.

I've got a set of Cinelli handlebars I installed in like...1985?

Of course, they sat in the garage along with the rest of my bike
from 1992-2004...

--Blair
"Either I'm getting old, or they are."

Bruce Jackson said:

I'd say that I certainly earned a new pair of bars. Then again I have
a pair each of 20 and 30 year old Campy cranks that have held up fine
even though a certain person around here seems to break them like
toothpicks. I guess I'm just easy on equipment.

At the gym I'm spinning at (to stay out of the cold) the
bike-maintenance guy is just about furious at how many
cranks are breaking.

He handles several of this chain's gyms in the area, and
says that this particular store is the only one where this
is happening.

I've personally never been in the class when it happened,
and nobody seems to see a pattern.

There was one bike sitting to the side in there this
morning, with the shaft snapped apart just inside the
chainring. The shaft and the threaded bolt through
it were sheared off, just slightly on the diagonal.

I intended to swing back on my way to work to take a
picture of it so I could post it on the bike-failures
webpage, but I forgot my camera. Maybe tomorrow morning
when I go back to lift I'll remember it.

--Blair
"Hey. It's a Usenet post. They can't all
be Casablanca."

jim beam said:

Lou D'Amelio said:

Just curious to see what thge sages of the newsgroup say about
handlebar lifespan. The specifics - Deda 215 26.0 clamp now coming up
on about 4 seasons / 20,000 miles. Never crashed, used for training and
some racing (if you can call Cat V pack fill racing)over good roads by
a 185 - 190 lb rider. Time to pre-emptively change or just keep riding
it ? Manufacturer's website no help. Thanks for opinions..........Lou
D'Amelio

preemption is prudent as aluminum fatigues, eventually. also prudent is
making sure your stem does not have sharp edges to the clamping surface.
sharp edges cause stress concentrations.

iirc, ttt specify about 20k, depending on use. it's mentioned in the
literature that accompanies their stems & bars. and as someone that has
personally experienced bar breakage while pulling hard from a light in
heavy traffic, i can assure you the cost of preemptive replacement every
few years is /well/ worth it.

How abruptly does an aluminum bar break - or more precisely, how did your bar
break?

Half just come off in the hand? Give way pulling up, pushing down?

Just curious.

Ron

begin quoting RonSonic <[email hidden]>:

Quoted message said:

How abruptly does an aluminum bar break - or more precisely, how did your bar
break?

I'm not sock-boy, but on the plus side, I'm not a sock puppet at all.

I broke a set of aluminium handlebars that had done, at a _very_ rough
guess, 25,000 miles; they'd been crashed once, cracking one of my ribs.

[In retrospect, that ought to have warned me. :-]

They broke on the left-hand side close to, but not at, the sleeve; I was
turning right on a roundabout at the time. There was no warning; suddenly
I wobbled all over the road as my hands ended up in a position I wasn't
expecting, and I looked down and saw what had happened; the left-hand side
had come completely free.
--
David Damerell <[email hidden]> flcl?
Today is Thursday, January.

On Thu, 20 Jan 2005 15:30:43 GMT, RonSonic
<[email hidden]> wrote:

[snip]

Quoted message said:

How abruptly does an aluminum bar break - or more precisely, how did your bar
break?

Half just come off in the hand? Give way pulling up, pushing down?

Just curious.

Ron

Dear Ron,

My cowhorn handlebar-half came off abruptly. I was pulling
up in low gear on a 5-speed Schwinn to do a wheelstand out
of what I didn't know was called a trackstands.

Come to think of it, in 1972 the Schwinn handlebar was
probably steel.

Back then, I knew of a number of Renthal aluminum motorcycle
handlebars that fractured abruptly, both when the rider was
pulling the front wheel up and when he was banging down off
a drop.

Filing the 90-degree clamp edges, known as radiusing them,
helped, turning the sharp stress-riser into something more
like a funnel.

Carl Fogel

On 20 Jan 2005 16:38:29 +0000 (GMT), David Damerell
<[email hidden]> wrote:

[snip]

Quoted message said:

I'm not sock-boy, but on the plus side, I'm not a sock puppet at all.

[snip]

Dear David,

Hmmm . . . we have only your word for that.

Carl Fogel

RonSonic said:

jim beam said:

Lou D'Amelio said:

Just curious to see what thge sages of the newsgroup say about
handlebar lifespan. The specifics - Deda 215 26.0 clamp now coming up
on about 4 seasons / 20,000 miles. Never crashed, used for training and
some racing (if you can call Cat V pack fill racing)over good roads by
a 185 - 190 lb rider. Time to pre-emptively change or just keep riding
it ? Manufacturer's website no help. Thanks for opinions..........Lou
D'Amelio

preemption is prudent as aluminum fatigues, eventually. also prudent is
making sure your stem does not have sharp edges to the clamping surface.
sharp edges cause stress concentrations.

iirc, ttt specify about 20k, depending on use. it's mentioned in the
literature that accompanies their stems & bars. and as someone that has
personally experienced bar breakage while pulling hard from a light in
heavy traffic, i can assure you the cost of preemptive replacement every
few years is /well/ worth it.

How abruptly does an aluminum bar break - or more precisely, how did your bar
break?

Half just come off in the hand? Give way pulling up, pushing down?

pulling up, it came off in my hand. it was sudden, just like most
fatigue failures. the fracture was at the point of maximum stress, the
point where the bar went into the stem clamp. the main problem is that,
unlike crank arms for instance, you really can't see anything going on
as it's all hidden at the clamp interface. you could disassemble
periodically, but each time you do that, you also run the risk of
scratching the handlebar at this critical point, & that in itself can
initiate fatigue.

anyway, i nursed the bike home carefully riding with one hand. showed
the failure to a friend: "look, it failed when i pulled on the bar like
this" pulling on the remaining half. and that came off in my hand too!
moral: preemptive replacement is the way to go.

Quoted message said:

Just curious.

Ron