All about bicycles, electric-assisted bikes, technology and safety in the press

The most common safety risks that we come across in our daily work around bicycle safety, technology and operating instructions are also published by us in articles in the leading German special-interest magazines TOUR (Europe's road bike magazine no. 1), BIKE (Europe's mountain bike magazine no. 1), MYBIKE and EMTB in order to make this information, which is important for the industry, available to a wider public.

For many years now, the Eurobike Show Daily, trade fair magazine of the annual Eurobike Show, has also given us the opportunity to publish our view of major developments in the cycle industry in full-page articles.

We also speak regularly in independent expert presentations about all areas of bicycle technology and the bicycle market. In addition, we are quoted by further special-interest magazines of the industry and the trade as well as increasingly by radio and television in their media reports, which shows us that we are spot on with our advice. The section "News" informs you about the latest news from our specialist areas. The reports and publications of this section are listed chronologically or according to areas of interest.

BIKE 12/2006
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Carbon handlebars

The assembly is decisive for riding fun or failure

Having analysed many broken handlebars in my engineering office one thing became very clear: The major part of failed handlebars, ie, stems was caused by incorrect assembly.

Therefore, adhere to some advice: Always assemble handlebar and stem of the same manufacturer and the same quality line. Comply with the torques indicated for the bolts by using an adequate torque wrench and regularly control the torques. Assure yourself at the manufacturer’s whether the torques indicated also apply to carbon handlebars. Since with fittings the torques printed on, often are too high for carbon handlebars! Therefore assemble parts like brake levers, bar ends and stems with some special carbon-assembly-paste within the marks printed on by the manufacturer. This paste increases friction – thereby achieving safe hold of the parts already with low bolt forces (material-gentle torque).

If you want to cut short your handlebar, check with the manufacturer where the reinforced parts for bar-end-clamping, brake- and shift levers are. If these parts are not clamped on the reniforcements, a break is preprogrammed.

Author: Dirk Zedler, graduate engineer, BIKE writer and bike expert

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