First Look: Easton Exp Handlebar System

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One of the reasons that teams get a little squirmy about having too many prying eyes at their test tracks during the off-season is that they run through quite a few different parts, whether it’s at the request of a current sponsor, or to try out something completely new from a competitive brand.

While poking around at one of the private Supercross tracks, we came across a team that was busy testing a new Easton handlebar with an even larger clamp diameter (35mm) than the current crop of oversized bars. The material is a proprietary Easton blend of aluminum, and the bars are constructed with their familiar Taperwall technology. (For those of you too young to remember, Easton had been involved in motocross, working with Pro Taper on their bars, but more recently their two-wheeled involvement has been restricted to mountain and road bikes.)

Of course, a bar this large requires a different set of bar clamps, which you can also see in the photo above, but they also created the very unique pad arrangement that holds securely over the clamps, even without the use of additional fasteners. As a final touch, they’ve also created their own grips.

The word we get is that these will be launching in Spring ’08, but you can look for a more thorough review sooner than that.