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With your material and engineering knowledge what are your initials thoughts on the bar?
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It's an interesting choice to use an aluminum/carbon hybrid and it makes sense in some ways. They had the option of using the carbon on the outside and aluminum on the inside, or the other way around with the carbon on the inside and the aluminum on the outside (which is what they did).
Carbon on the outside would have been a much more efficient structure, as the outer layers are the ones that do the most work in supporting bending loads. But if you're going to do that, you may as well have a full carbon bar. The only point of the aluminum in that case is to prevent a catastrophic failure. The bars would likely bend rather than completely snap in failure which would lower the chance of significant injury.
With what they chose - carbon inside the aluminum - they get similar protection from catastrophic failure and they get much better protection from the stress risers of the bar mount clamps, the lever clamps, etc. and better protection from roost and similar damage.
They can tune the carbon stiffness to make it however stiff they'd like (within reason), so it's likely these flex the same as a regular Evo bar, or close to it. The benefit to the carbon is the increased strength at a low weight allows them to reduce the thickness of the aluminum and save some weight overall for the same bar strength (and likely the same stiffness). Plus they get to use the buzz word "carbon" which lots of people go nuts over.
I'm a fan of the Fatbar36 myself, so if it's not lighter than that, then I'm not too interested. It is nice that they use a standard 1 1/8" mount, though, and it's possible that they have a bit more flex (if that's what you're after), so they're certainly a good fit for some people.
There are some pictures and you can see the direction they laid the fiber. It looks like it is made to keep the aluminum from crushing/folding up. I don't think it is going to add much rigidity to whatever the base aluminum already has. I would love to know the weight savings. It bet it absorbs a lot of higher frequency vibration with that CF core. I wonder if it feels too dead almost like I imagine a plastic bar would.
https://www.vitalmx.com/forums/Bike-Builds,46/2020-yz250-build-full-sen…
EVO = 664g (635g advertised)
ACF = 593g (no weight advertised)
Fat36 = 437g
Old gold = 635g
So they're about 10% lighter than an Evo, but not even close to a FB36.
I'm not surprised they're using unidirectional carbon as that will be the most efficient. Fibers running along the bar is far more efficient in handling bending loads than the "traditional" woven carbon we're used to seeing everywhere.
And it should dampen vibration better than a standard aluminum bar as they have a composite structure of varying materials, stiffness, and density. The question is how much better does it dampen vibration than a standard bar?
It's hard to tell what's going on from the photo, but it looks like some sort of weave, at least on the outer-most layer that interfaces with the bar. That could be for better adhesion to the bars or a completely made-up image for marketing. I would be surprised if the inner layers were anything but unidirectional along the length of the bars.
https://www.keeferinctesting.com/pro-taper-acf-handlebars/
How did they compare to some regular bars, like Evos?
I forgot to add there is a warning on both ends saying not to cut the bars or use full wrap handguards with an expanding plug. So don't plan on using full wrap handguards or cutting the bars shorter. There is no knurling on the clutch side either. I figured out why it comes with a new bar pad. The standard Pro-taper pad is too wide due to the increase in control surface area.
Also, WRC, what is "race team" bend? I haven't seen that one. Thanks man.
Pit Row
Acf pad 156g
Protaper evo pad 119g
Husky oem pad (‘22) 93g
So the oem husky bar plus pad are 8g lighter than acf bar and pad.
What method did you use to cut them?
Also curious is anyone has ignored the other part of the warning and installed full wrap handguards inside them? It seems pretty obvious then when the mounts are tightened it will damage the carbon inside but are there any bad side effects from that besides possibly weakening that area of the bar and making it more susceptible to bending?
Compromising the last inch of the bar means nothing. Do it!
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