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Anyone actually done it? Am I being overly cautions wanting to buy new ones? Just my commuter has seen a good number of years of use and the thought passed through my mind as I was sprinting from the lights.
You might as well buy a new house while you're at it just in case the one you have now falls down.
Some do bend/break. Some seem to last forever.
Buy steel or carbon - infinite fatigue life 😛
Yes and it hurt. Learnt my lesson not to buy second-hand again.
Never seen it, I've seen bars bend well out of shape, but never snapped.
I snapped some, 2 month old, Rental Fatbar Lite bars in a crash. Won't ever know whether the crash broke the bars or the bars breaking caused the crash. I imagine that the bars broke in the crash.
[url= https://farm9.staticflickr.com/8601/16074619233_033493afb8_z.jp g" target="_blank">https://farm9.staticflickr.com/8601/16074619233_033493afb8_z.jp g"/> [/img][/url][url= https://flic.kr/p/qusCgt ]Rental Fatbar Lite[/url] by [url= https://www.flickr.com/people/33251520@N07/ ]eddkh[/url], on Flickr
An old stem of mine disintegrated. Check them much more often now!
I twisted a pair of Aluminium (6061 😉 ) Scott riser bars about 14 years ago which I used on my trials bike.
These were pretty low budget xc bars which came off my second hand Klein xc bike I'd bought previously. It took a few years of drop offs, gap jumps and repeated throwing the bike to the ground as I fell off stuff before they twisted. It's a miracle they survived that long.
My crowning achievement was a 7ft drop off the sea wall onto the flat pavement below. Obviously landed rear wheel first but I remember the front wheel coming down with an almighty thwack afterwards. IIRC I was sporting some equally cheap FSA riser bars by this point and some unforgiving Kona P2 steel forks.
I wouldn't be too worried about one failing from just riding around. If you are worried about fatigue then there are plenty of cheap options in CRC sales for something new.
My brother snapped a Cinelli 1a stem and had a major OTB experience as a result (road bike). He was fortunate to walk away with just a bruised shoulder.
Admitedly the stem was about 20 years old but it demonstrates that all components can (and ultimately will at some point) fail.
I fatigue cracked a pair of old Pace Renthal sub 130 bars, but they never failed before I noticed the cracks and retired them. Just goes to show the aluminium doesn't always fail catastrophically despite what people claim.
Just give your current bars a good look over and they'll probably be fine, especially if they weren't super light. However, if you are really worried swap them.
Snapped some Kore and Raceface bars years back. Broke two Raceface stem plates...don't use Raceface any more.
Handlebars can and do fatigue fail. Had an Azonic bar fail and the resulting crash broke my left wrist In a few places and caused a fair bit of damage to my right wrist. It's been said before don't use old bars.
2 friends witnessed a road stem failure resulting in 2 broken wrists.
i had a thomsen stem (old style) develop 2 1cm hairline cracks either side of the wedge but changed that before it went snap.
Anyone remember the Pace RC130 bars? had them snap as I was just standing next to the bike pushing the forks down.
Yes. Marin commuter bike, bar just snapped off as I pulled away from lights, not giving it major beans or anything.
A consumable to my way of thinking now. A four/five year consumable sure, but cost/risk balance doesn't stack up beyond that.