I have been keeping an eye on Primavera aero carbon bars for some time. They have been reduced and available in 380mm. Perfect. Purchased with some Christmas money.
My bike is my first hydraulic brake bike. I’ve never bleed the brakes before. I also needed some new cable clippers. The new handlebars have an internal routing section, meaning I had to replace the barbs and olives on the hose and the gear cables. The gears are internally routed, so I needed an internal cable kit as well (which did come in very handy). New bar tape. Mineral oil and finally, during setup I couldn’t remove a hex bolt, stripped it and needed to buy some smaller torx keys to fit.
I thought I’d make a post because in the end, I found the whole ordeal incredibly frustrating and more expensive than I had planned.
New handlebars £120
Hydraulic brake bleed kit £25
Internal cable kit £5
Cable cutters £25
New cables £6
Mineral oil £6
Barbs and olives £6
New brake pads £9
Set of torx screwdrivers £8
Finding that the one internal cable cover I had to remove had a stuck bolt and now it’s rounded off - annoyingly frustrating
Learning how to bleed my brakes and having lovely new handlebars - priceless
The money you will save over time will make up for money spent learning. Plus when a friend has an issue you can impress them with your tools and know how.
I’m already the go to fix it friend
I think I’ve repaired over 10 bikes in 2024
I do enjoy getting to stuff and having a go. My LBS is amazing and always happy to help me out, despite not getting much repair work from me.
It was a cathartic post. I’ve still not finished because I’m going to need to take the bike to the shop tomorrow because of the stripped bolt. I can finish the rear derailleur cabling at the moment.
I have the Primavero aero’s in 38. Been on them about 2 1/2 years, maybe about 25K miles. They have been great, especially for the price against the competition. The internal routing wasn’t really problematic having now installed this same bar across two separate builds. Among the best bars I have ever used.
Yeah. You don’t generally count the cost of tools because you still have them and can use them in the future. And, of course, the learning process doing something for the first time is priceless.
Congrats on the bars and new tools. If you’re really a cheapo (or you don’t have any on hand) you can re-use the old olives. Cut the line close to the olive and melt the plastic out with a torch.
I definitely count myself as a cheapo but I’m already paranoid enough about riding a bike where I’ve assembled/serviced the brakes myself without also skimping on a £2 olive!
I re-used mine because Shimano barbs and olives are a little confusing. They have two different kinds. I wasn’t sure which one came OEM on my bike, so the safest thing for me was to re-use the original barb and olive. Regardless, it takes little heat to melt plastic, much less than the 1600F it takes to melt the brass. I also saw the mountain bikers doing it on youtube with no qualms.
I got a new handlebars before Xmas and, to avoid going through what you did, I just left the cables running outside the handlbars (as they were with the stock handlebars). It’s a Gravel bike, it doesn’t have to be aero, and I didn’t want to faff around with disconnecting hoses. The worst part of the whole process was wrapping the new bartape, which was a first for me. I think I re-wrapped about 20 times (not even exaggerating)
Yep. I’m 170cm, ~72kg, riding 360mm bars. Cornering is & always was fine; it’s the getting out of the saddle that felt sketchy when I switched from 440s. I just had to learn to be more precise. No issues with it now.
This is the sort of thing I avoided by paying the shop once-off to recable with compressionless outer so I could run mechanical brakes. No more mess & less random specialist tools.
