Lynskey Handlebars – Discuss March 10th, 2009
Titanium. Three piece. 31.8mm clamp. 710mm width. Flipping light. Flipping expensive. Regular sweep. Or crazy mega-sweep (as in the pics).
View from the back.
View from the front.
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the old expression springs to mind
If I have to ask how much, I wont be able to afford it
So I won’t
What are the benefits over a normal riser bar?
They’re going to be NUKEPROOF bars actually
Benefits. Extremely light (227g), lifetime guarantee.
So, why?
And I don’t mean to be rude but 227g isn’t extremely light – my EA70’s come in just over that (241g actual) so aside from the funky design and construction by Lynskey I’m not seeing any point in spending ‘Flipping Expensive’ category money.
Convince me?
Was I hearing about £1/g ??
227g is extremely light for a 710mm riser bar, with a lifetime guarantee.
I don’t do “convince me”. They’re clearly ridiculously expensive, but we like them.
Sorry – to confirm – pricing circa £200 ($250ish for US customers).
Yes. They look pretty cool. I’m sure they’ll appear on a lovingly whittled piece of polished chrome somewhere at the Handmade Bicycle Show next year. Personally, i’d like to see more non-riser bars – i.e. flatties with a nice sweep and wide heft; that would extol the virtue of form over function to me
Cheaper to make than a traditional design?
Sorry. I meant function over form – obviously…
eaaston dh bar is 710, 225g, and 70 quid cheaper…
or burgtecs are 40 grams heavier, 40mm wider, and 125 quid cheaper…
personally i wouldn’t, i’d get one of what i just listed, don’t like the tube sticking out the bottom. but each to their own….
You don’t do ‘convince me’? Ok, then how about this – why the interesting design, what advantages does it offer?
Would these count as uncontrovertible, scientific proof that you had more money than sense?
And bad taste that was rooted in the clunker movement.
Quite like the look, do like the lifetime guarantee, can’t afford it in titanium, will they be lifetime guaranteed in aluminium, or steel?
who’s lifetime? brant’s? your’s your bikes?
or the life of the bars up until they break?
They cant be that expensive, look at the bike there on!
what’s the rise ?
Is it wrong that I don’t trust welded handlebars? These Nukeproof ones, Titec H-bar, Jones H-bar, Groovy Luv Handles, I like them all but have this nagging feeling in the back of my head that these will fail. Stupid and irrational, my frame is welded and it hasn’t failed, but I’m no engineer, nor do I claim to know more than the designers of these bars (unlike some on here), so should I just buy a set?
be honest, they go up the other way don’t they.
agree jupiter, don’t trust them for some reason, looks like the sides will fall off as soon as you hit any sort of bump, will the warranty cover all types of riding? Are they maybe not a bit easier on the arms over bumpy ground like a titanium frame is supposed to be or is that just a load of bollocks.
If people are worried a welded bar will fail, why are they not worried their welded frames won’t? I guess its ‘cos most riders have no clue about real engineering. Ah well.
Sorry but they look ugly and unfinished to me. One of those love or hate components I guess…a bit like those horrible bent Thompson layback seatposts. Ti or not, I wouldn’t spoil my bike with them if they were £20 never mind £200.
“Sorry but they look ugly and unfinished to me”
Ugly? You should see me at this time in the morning.
Unfinished? Yes – you’re quite right. Those are pre-production sample blast finish without graphics.
I fitted them to my bike and they made me smile, and their aesthetic comes purely from the construction method used.
God knows I like to spend money on bike parts, but as already pointed out, they’re not ‘extemely’ light, and are certainly uber expensive, compared to the competition. Also not a fan of the looks.
I’m sure some folk will like them, just not me.
So can anyone explain why they’re made the way they are? Is it to allow greater sweep than would normally be viable with a single tube bar? Is there some benefit to position? Is it stiffer? stronger? There has to be SOME reason, surely?
And before I get told I’m being argumentative and have another comment pulled I’m genuinely interested in the thinking behind the design rather than bickering about looks.
There’s something mildly amusing in riding a £400 bike with a £200 set of handlebars…
To do an oversize 31.8mm centre bar in titanium is very hard. To make it in one piece, you would have to start with a 31.8mm tube, then roll it down at the ends to 22.2mm, then put bends in. I have no idea if this is even possible. I guess Nasa could do it. It’s awfully expensive just in terms off tooling, and unless you butted the tube before you’d do it, you’d end up with very thick walls on the 22.2mm stuff.
So I decided to suggest this method. Where you can choose the wall thickness you want for each section and just weld it together. The two 22.2mm bits have a single plane bend. The cross section has an ovalisation at each end, and a mitre. The centre is “re-rounded” after welding to make sure the bars don’t creak.
We’re really happy with the results, and equally realise that the market for £200 handlebars is probably quite limited
I think they look cool.
Thanks Brant. Now it makes sense
They do look fugly to me, whats the reasoning behind leaving the bit of tubing past the welds onto the cross piece? surely it would look neater and save some weight it it was cut/welded flush, and the tubing shaped to blend in.
The look is growing on me. Don’t think they’re for me, 660 – 680 is wide enough pour moi.
The biggest drawback I can see Brant is customers taking a leap of faith to buy. Can see take up being slow as people get to ride other peoples. £200 for a bar is a lot of outlay on something that is, let’s be fair, in appearance away from the norm. But obviously not intended as a mass Market thing like a Jones H Bar. Will there be a steel version?
As Mr Bontrager said “light, cheap, longlife – pick any 2″
“surely it would look neater and save some weight it it was cut/welded flush, and the tubing shaped to blend in.”
Much longer weld on the bottom. And it’d still stand out. I’m happy with the “cut off BMX bar” look
Most shocking part of the story –
“I fitted them to my bike and they made me smile, and their aesthetic comes purely from the construction method used”
Brant rides a Cube!
I think they look good, if they conformed to the “normal” look they’d be just the same as everything else? But then i do like the Jones H bar!!
But obviously not intended as a mass Market thing like a Jones H Bar. Will there be a steel version?
Jones bars are mass market? Well I never…
“Brant rides a Cube!”
No – that was Benji’s test bike. I ride an on-one (currently)!
“Jones bars are mass market? Well I never…”
I think that’s the grammatic pedant in you coming out Chipps. Or you read it wrong
they look like a £10 bar.
you’d have to be a mug to buy them.
“What’s in a name? that which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet” – Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare
” A turd, while polished, will always be a turd” – Sanny:-)
I just don’t see the point in the same way that Jones bikes are to my eye an object lesson in fugliness and justification of a design that doesn’t really do anything better than the next bike along other than look that bit different. I’m curiously reminded of the mid 90s fashion for fancy bike bits that came from small manufacturers in a miasma of anodising. Where are they now, I wonder? I suspect the fact that there was a collective realisation that Mr Shimano made stuff that worked better, lasted longer and cost a whole lot less might have contributed to their demise.
Still, if only for the reason of creating brand awareness, the fugly bars have clearly done a great job!
Sanny
Admit it, you just cut the bottom bit off some bmx bars
Surely the big advantage is the material? Ti has that bit of spring and vibration absorbtion like carbon, that Aluminium doesn’t. After breaking my wrist I wapped bars on two bikes to carbon or Ti and found it helped remove a problem with wrist ache. So these bars are competing with the likes of Easton Monkey lights on performance and I guess some people just don’t like carbon.
The look is growing on me, but that is clearly a personal thing!
Brant why not just use 22.2mm bar (butted if possible) and spacers at the stem clamp as some other manufacturers of Ti bars do? and with a choice of spacer size luddites (like me) that are still using a standard size stem are still served by the bar.
neilnevil – a mate of mine had aluminium bars that flexed to an alarming degree (the ends would flex by about 2cm when he put all his weight (not much) on them).
It depends on the alloy and construction.
glen, as you say, construction is important but there is also a difference in feel between stif/flexy and harsh/absorbing. I have a set of 710mm ish Ti bars from Seven and find them really stiff, they really don’t seem to flex at all (but I can notice both my 660mm wide Aluminium FSA bars or my 660mm wide USE carbon bars flex a little) but the Ti bars still don’t make my wrist ache. The Aluminium ones do sometimes. Odd isn’t it.
Hi Neil, how’s it going?
Re your comments about wrist pain, I think you might be confusing cause and effect. My wrist was intermittently quite painful after I broke it, but has gradually got better over four years or so, with no change to the bars I’m using. If anything, with the introduction of 31.8 they’re even stiffer than what I was on before. It’s just part of the healing process.
Hi Anthony,
(
not bad thanks, except the riding in London doesn’t come close to Bristol and its surroundings! Epping Forest was a comlete swamp at the weekend
I agree with what you say healing gets there eventually, I can pretty much ride any of my bikes ache free now….even the unicogger that currently has the aluminium bars and rigid salsa cro mo forks. BUT for a couple of years I had carbon bars on one bike and alloy bars on another and only rides on the alloy bar’ed bike made my wrist ache. When I swapped the bars on that bike too the aching stopped. Ti and Carbon bars, just like frames, should hopefully have a bit more life and spring and a bit less harshness. That makes very little difference to many of us but it does matter for a few people.
Fair do’s. I wouldn’t spend £200 to sort out a problem that’s going to naturally resolve itself, but then I’m a tightwad.
Sorry to hear London is a swamp, but then so is Bristol at the moment!
Interesting. If you lengthen the centre tube and weld the extensions slightly differently then they are very similar to Jones H-Bars. Squinting helps a bit
Checks date, no just a bit too early…
Just put the regular sweep, less “matt finish” version on my bike today. Liking the Grifter styling.
very similar styling to my old Spooky bars.
hmmm. No. [sorry Brant]
Well I think they are lovely. Bugger all chance over being able to afford them, but hey. To be honest the more comments I read from people slagging them off, the more I started to like them….
Where can they be ordered from? Just so that I can bookmark the page for future window shopping purposes.
Hmmm, the matt grey would match my natural steel Inbred 567, probably match the price I paid for the frame, too…
Yep, the more I look at them, the more I like them. All those who don’t trust a welded bar to stay in one piece, stop using your bikes NOW. They are definitely going to break on you the next time you ride them, FACT.
Right, now the idiots have all left, the smart ones can get back to admiring a neat solution to a tricky problem. Still can’t afford them, tho’.
*Sniff*
a solution to a problem that doesn’t exist.
I’ve come to the conclusion that they are a “folly” (in the architectural sense), not that they are strictly for decoration, more that they have a sense of “fun” and “light heartedness” about them, a great feeling of “lets just do something because we can” – rather than because it makes sense in a world of focus groups and profit margins.
Our new dog’s called Folly.
I’ve heard this little company called Easton do some pretty light and strong handlebars, could be worth a look…
(Boring factual bit, Aluminium is actually a lighter material than titanium, Ti is just stronger. If you are limited by wall thickness, this bar could be heavier than say an E70…) Tarty though. Nice gimick for the rich and lonely….
@Brant – Cool name, is he/she a greyhound by any chance? We have 2 plus 2 lurchers…
@treesandrocks – surely life would be rather dull if we all just stuck to the sensible option, for a start the only cars on the roads would be mondeos.
@ChrisS – yes – rescue greyhound – we’ve had her about 10days.
Local trail fans can have a ball by trying to work out where this is
http://twitpic.com/1z6l2
@Brant – LOL. Let me know if you need a nice martingale for her, wife makes them to raise funds for .
http://www.greyhoundgap.org.uk/
Oh my word they are nice. How much??
@robdob, you talking about the stuff for the Greyhounds or the Lynkeys?
The bars.
They are so hot….
Brant…. Can we do it? yes we can B-)