Review: OneUp Carbon Bars
To improve ride feel OneUp Components have adopted a pretty unique design to their carbon bar lineup, but does it work?
From a 35mm stem clamp size, the bars taper into an oval shape and then transition to a standard, round 22.2mm diameter. It is this very shape and geometry of the bar that OneUp has adopted to bring about compliance and what they say their test results verify is a smoother ride.
OneUp Components is based in Squamish, B.C Canada. The company was founded by Chris, Jon and Sam who were engineers at Race Face. With a combined 29 years of bike industry experience, they pride themselves on ‘making products we want on our bikes’.
Features
OneUp says they have taken full advantage of the properties of a carbon bar by shaping it to reduce trail vibrations. From the stem clamp, the bars quickly taper to a flat oval shape before forming the traditional 22.2mm grip and brake clamp size. The oval shape which has a patent-pending distinguishes the look of the bars. OneUp supplies the bars as 800mm and in a 20mm or 35mm rise with customized decal options to match your rig.
Details
Ride Impressions
Ride Impressions
I honestly didn’t notice any flex on technical trails but that doesn’t mean there is no compliance. There is definitely some damping of trail vibrations but it was less than what I expected. However, when I switched back to my original bars and hit the same trails the difference was obvious. My hands and wrists were fatiguing earlier in the ride and the spikey ride feel was back again. Kudos to OneUp for some cool innovation here – these bars do work!
| IMAGES: Gary Perkin |
A Second Opinion, by Kyle Collair
“Yes, I do like them. The effect of the compliance in the bars is quite obvious. At high speed or when hammering, you don’t really feel anything odd. But say if you’re climbing slowly along a road, you can definitely sense a bit of up/down movement at the grips. But on the trail, it just smooths out the chatter. I have it on my Enduro at the moment, which is probably overkill as it is a 170mm bike. I think using them on a down-country or trail bike is probably the most beneficial application.” – Kyle Collair