Today, I received an integrated carbon handlebar that I purchased from China. I was wondering if there is any way to test the reliability/robustness of the structure since I plan to race crits with it and don’t want to end up at the hospital.
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Use a torque wrench and see if it looses torque over time. I had cheapos that would constantly loosen and everyday I’d find they needed another push to stay at 10nm or whatever it was.
Side note - I replaced them - never felt safe
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I wouldn’t bet my collarbones or AC shoulder joints on an unknown handlebar stem combo.
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I think I’ve said this before, on these forums, but I would never buy bike parts from someone I couldn’t sue.
You cannot sue a Chinese manufacturer.
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The only testing you could do to be completely sure would be destructive.
I’ve done CT on carbon bars before but knew exactly where to look for the problem that was expected and it still wasn’t trivial. And this is before you consider the cost of industrial CT.
I suppose you could use ultrasound to check for defects but I’ve never tried the method and I’m guessing you probably got aero style bars with different shapes and general weirdness going on.
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At the cost of them, you could go the route of buying a couple and using one for a destructive test. I have some, bought with looking at the number of orders and feedback and with over 500 orders with no failure feedback. That being said, they have more flex than alloy and I will use them for rides but I am not sure if want to put them under the stress of a Crit race.
I mean this in the most respectful way possible (and not being a troll). This is one of the most toxic mentalities I could possibly think of.
I have about 5000 miles on a Chinese frame, over 3 years. Never once have I had a problem with it. However, I never once went into the buying process for the frame nor learning which factory was better than another…with the mentality that I had to sue someone as my backup plan. I made the choice to buy the frame. I’m taking responsibility for the action. I was aware of the risks. I was also very heads up on maintenance and checking over the frame for the first few months.
Additionally, if you buy straight from the factory (not alibaba) you do actually have a direct line of communication. I found them very responsive to issues (I.e. in my original order they forgot to include an extra derailleur hanger, which they promptly sent me. They also supported me with various bottom bracket installation issues when I built up the bike. The three of four major players in the China carbon market all work like this. The English is a bit rough at times but it’s enough to get the point across. Also I know I’m lucky having a partner who is fluent in Mandarin if I really need to get into something very technical (which I have not). Three years down the road with the frame I still get emails every few months from the factory asking me how it is going (and offering news on their latest frames). Try getting that from a brand name bike manufacturer.
If I would of had a quality issue I would have chalked it up to experience. If I would of had a mechanical issue, that resulted in a crash, it still would have been on me. The last thought I’d ever have is “who do I get to sue now.”.
This goes with any bike purchase (brand name or generic china), or frankly any purchase I make.
Apologies for calling you out but I just find this mentality so distasteful.
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Can you plzz give me the name of that manufacturer from whom you got the fram. Actually, I am looking for a TT frame and also TT cockpit. Thank You!!!
Before I bought carbons bars I did my home work and read more than I care to admit on everyone’s testing procedures and failures. In the end after reading review after review I made the choice to try out a set of BXT carbon bars for my MTB. Every failure that I read about could be set into one issue segment, they were over tightened and caused crush damage to the bar and caused a failure point.
So I bought them…fast forward a few months, flying down a downhill section and clipped a tree at 40 plus mph with the very last inch of the right side just past my pinky finger. Beside ripping 2 inches off my grip and a nasty crash it fractured the resin/gel coat in the inside 1 inch of the bar. The outside looked untouched. They are still on the bike and have had another 300 miles put on them, I also decided to be a big spender and ordered another pair of bars…19.00 bucks…
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Thanks for your feedback guys. The more I read one chinese carbone products, the more II realize that most people against it are people that don’t own a chinese product…
I’ll try my handlebar on the road this week on bad surfaces to see how it feels. I’ll make sure to tight the screws at 10nm
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Do whatever the bars say. My 3T has a Max of 8 Nm on the shifters but 6 is plenty. Stem is 5 Nm.
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I went with WorksWellBikes. HongFu is also very good.
No offense taken. I did not intend this to be a slander against the Chinese people, at all, and if it was taken as such, I apologize.
Here’s why I say this: Chinese courts do not enforce judgements of American courts – if you successfully sue, say, Light Bicycle in an American court, the Chinese courts throw your judgement in the trash. I have no idea why this occurs, and I’m sure there are very complicated geopolitical and cultural reasons as to why. But the bottom line is that if my Chinese carbon rim disintegrates at speed and leaves half of my face smeared across 50 feet of asphalt, that’s it. Short of hiring a law firm in China to prosecute on Chinese soil in a Chinese court, I will never see any restitution.
Are their products excellent? I’m sure they are. Can you have companies with excellent customer service and good communication? Of course. But if your bike were to come apart and you were to be injured, I would be very comfortable saying that the company would offer you no recompense other than “I’m very sorry”.
Anecdotes are not data, I know, but my local bike shop had to push extremely hard to get a defective rim from Light Bicycle warrantied. They just warrantied my entire frame with Cannondale with almost no hassle, and deal with other major manufacturers with an in-country presence, all the time. None of them were as difficult as dealing with Light Bicycle, and if they had refused a warranty, there would have been no recourse, whatsoever.
Again, I meant no offense, and apologize if what I said was in any way offensive. But the American and Chinese legal climate is very very weird, and if the worst were to happen and I were to be injured by a defective product, I would at least want the option of legal recompense from the company.
Here’s the exchange I had with a lawyer friend of mine I had, before deciding not to buy Chinese rims. This was a personal exchange, so the language is casual:
"Suing overseas entities is possible, it’s just complicated and hard and depends a lot on where the other entity is. In theory there is a web of international treaties that allow and govern it. The practicalities are where things break down.
To over-generalize, you can sue either in a US court or in a court in their country.
If you sue in the US you either get a default judgment or they appear and defend the action. One tricky part is ensuring they were properly served, which is governed by some Hague Convention I think. (There is also a whole complicated thing called personal jurisdiction that can determine which foreign entities you can sue in US courts.) if they defend and you win, or if you get a default judgment, you have to try and enforce the judgment. It’s comparatively easy to enforce a US judgment in another US court. (Hence, sue something with a US presence since they have stuff you can take.) Doing so abroad is a mess, because again we are back in that morass of treaties. Theoretically foreign courts enforce US judgments and theoretically US courts enforce foreign judgments, but there’s a big discretionary overlay that I am not entirely familiar with but I think boils down to whether the enforcing court thinks the foreign court gave the defendant a fair shake/treated them with the fairness required by the enforcing court’s country’s law. Western European countries and the US generally like each other so that works. For whatever reason, though, Chinese courts hate enforcing US judgments and almost never do it. So your US judgment is mostly worthless in Chinese court.
All that leaves us with the original alternative, suing in China. Good luck! Possible? Sure. But you don’t know their negligence/product liability rules, you don’t know who to sue, you don’t know what lawyers to hire, etc etc. Doing this for a few grand, or even a hundred thousand dollars, is a fools errand.
Every step here, by the way, costs a fair amount of attorney time (meaning dollars). So it’s just a huge pain for a practically unenforceable judgment.
If you want to do more googling and research, there are a bunch of blog posts and articles aimed at companies trying to do manufacturing and other business in China, with lawyers recommending you hire a china specialist at the outset so you can protect yourself when stuff goes south. The personal injury/products liability overlay will complicate things, but I imagine the general principles are the same."
I think you missed his point all together 
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Agree with your sentiments and my experience was similar dealing direct with a Chinese manufacturer when building a carbon wheels. I don’t buy products off of Alibaba or for that matter eBay. I prefer to buy direct from the source.
Would you share who you dealt with for rims. I might build a set for my track bike this summer
Went with Yoeleo 50s. After sourcing the rest of the parts from wheelbuilder.com it would have been just about the same price to have them built at the factory with DT Swiss 350’s and AeroLite spokes.
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Thank you, Sir. Hope I get the stuff what a want.
I would sell those as fast as you can. Just get some aluminum ones in your budget.