[Closed] Recommend a wide bar with flex

O-o carbon knuckleball in 'chewy' flavour? Mine are 777mm i think 🙂

Get the Renthal Carbon version, my Fatbar Lite Carbon is pretty flexy.

Chewy Knuckleball only comes in the short version.

Crank Bros Cobalt 11 comes in 780mm is very, very soft- I've had people say it doesn't look safe 😆 You can see and feel it move if you bounce on it. Love it though, totally cured hand problems I was having on the fatbike.

2nd the cobalt. It's got a lot of give but doesn't make the front end feel squirrelly.

Nothing from Thomson. They are not at home to Mr Flex

I'm always intrigued (and usually remain silent) when components and their flex is discussed.

Does there really come a point when the flex in the suspension, the tyre and the rim are ramped up to such a high level that there is any genuinely noticeable flex in the bar that a human can detect?

larkim - Member

Does there really come a point when the flex in the suspension, the tyre and the rim are ramped up to such a high level that there is any genuinely noticeable flex in the bar that a human can detect?

depends how you approach it. In isolation yes you can change a part and feel a difference, and know where the difference is. As a system, it's very hard to ride a bike and say "This is comfortable because of the bar" except in extremes, or if you write for MBR.

OK so, example. I had a rigid scandal, carbon fork, 2.3 tyre, carbon bars, foam grips. Obviously you got beat up riding it fast but it was a comfy package, for what it was. When I got my fatbike, I swapped the exact same bar, stem and grips onto it, but added a 4.0 tyre, and a stiff alu fork. And it beat **** out of me, my hands would pack up after a 3 minute trail, it was grim. Not at all what you'd expect. Admittedly, I was able to ride faster, so it's not a totally fair comparison.

So, I tried fatter grips. Made it worse (I had to squeeze harder!). So I got the Cobalts and it literally went with one part change, from being destroyed after minutes, to being able to solo a 7 hour xc race without a twinge. That's fairly ridiculous. And you'd think, there's 4 inches of bounce there so how can less movement in a bar make a difference. I suspect it's a vibration/frequency thing, like, the tyre damps out big hits but not constant rattle and buzz. (maybe I need some of those vibration powerbands Commencal has)

I'm not kidding when I say you can see the crank bros bars flex btw, and you can put way more force through it when riding than you do bouncing it in the car park

Cheers - I guess its difficult to understand some of this "feel" when the parts on the bike you ride don't change too much, and budget means you're changing big hitting parts rather than incrementally changing other bits. Good to hear your experience, thanks!