Easton Part 1: Carbonization Done Right
1999.
The dawn of a new millennium, Y2K is the talk of the town, and it’s only August. I’m working at Poison Spider Bikes, looking forward (in my usual stressed-out way) to the weekend’s downhill race somewhere in Quebec while wrenching on a Giant Boulder, one of hundreds we’d sold..
A regular customer rocks up to the service counter with his road bike. His handlebars feel funny; can I take a look?
It only takes a moment to confirm my fear. I unwrap his bar tape to reveal his carbon drop bar is broken at the brake lever mount. The tape was holding it together.
The hair stands up on the back of my neck. Horrified.
I conclude carbon bars are stupid and dangerous. Each time I see a broken carbon bar my conclusion is supported. This is a classic example of confirmation bias.
I don’t actively register carbon bars that aren’t breaking; nothing’s ‘happening’. I note most, if not all pro road racers are on aluminum bars. Ha! I take a few data points, develop a confirmation bias, and close the book on carbon bars.
Re-examining Carbon Bias
For better or worse, I’m a pragmatist. This isn’t to say I’m cold and calculated about everything; commercials have made me cry. I think it’s fair to say may passion for cycling, which is very much centred around the wonder and joy riding manifests, drives my vision for what it can and should be, how all it has to offer can be experienced by more and more people all the time. But joy and wonder don’t just happen. They manifest when rider and machine move through time and space seamlessly, as one, in harmony.
No amount of marketing mumbo-jumbo can overcome the deficiencies of poorly conceived, designed and constructed equipment. Riding in all-conditions brings the strengths and weaknesses of every piece of technology we use to the fore, especially when riding in the cold of Canadian winter. And this is where my recent re/turn to carbon began.
While riding snirt one Sunday morning at about -13C in January, 2019, I got annoyed for the umpteenth time with my aluminum bars sucking way too much heat out of my hands. Metal is a ‘heat sink,’ and I hate the loss of dexterity that comes with wearing thick stuff on my hands. So I got to thinking: perhaps I should give carbon a chance, since it doesn’t conduct?
I’ve been ‘against’ carbon handlebars since day-1, because early examples were known to fail catastrophically, and I’ve always valued not-dying while riding my bike. I’ve had a front end of a bike snap off twice while riding at speed, and let me tell you, it’s not cool. One of these failures put me in the hospital.
I’ve also been uncomfortable with the uncertainty of carbon components’ integrity after crashes, and I can’t fathom throwing out bars ‘just in case’ they’re damaged, particularly when their primary benefit has been weight savings.
The big thing is, safety is often about confidence. I know from experience that I can’t perform at my best - where ‘best’ means perfect matching of my capabilities to the situation at hand, be it descending a dirt road at 80kph or bunnyhopping a fallen tree - unless I have complete confidence that my bike will do exactly what I want it to do, not come apart or malfunction under me.
You don’t have to be a pragmatist to understand the importance of this confidence. If I have an inkling of doubt as to whether my bike will fail in some manner as I’m riding, there’s no way I’ll perform in anything resembling a flow state, and I’m bound to make some sort of error. In case ‘flow state’ sounds kinda goofy to you, keep in mind that flow states are the safest states to ride bikes or do anything else involving speed in. While in flow states, mistakes are very rare occurrences, so anyone who wishes to ride bikes or whatever else fast for years and years would benefit from taking steps to ensure they maintain total confidence in their equipment, which might preclude running ultra-light components, which do nothing to contribute to flow.
This orientation is the reason I’m not known to run the lightest set-up for any discipline, ever. I’ve made many decisions over the years that bias toward reliability and safety, versus marginal gains.
(Rational) fear and uncertainty have rendered me happier saving money and potential waste by carrying the extra weight and buzz of aluminum. However, the struggle with my hands got me thinking more deeply about where carbon components stand today, versus where the material was when I decided they were stupid.
That re-examination led me to the carbon components I’m already using and trust. Woven Precision Handbuilt wheels have been far stronger than any alloy rims I’ve ever ridden or built for others, and perform exceptionally well across all the disciplines I apply them to. I’ve smashed them so hard I was shocked they were unaffected. I’ve finished gravel and cyclocross races on flat tires without taking rim damage. I can’t imagine wanting to use alloy rims for anything but rain (with rim brakes) and utility bikes these days.
I’ve run SRAM carbon cranks for years, with only one issue: a loose pedal thread. That was pretty lame, but after maybe 25 thousand kilometres on the crank, not the worst thing in the world.
I’ve used carbon seatposts from 3T and Specialized with no issues to speak of, and they’ve taken massive beat-downs.
And I rode a Cervelo S5 for years, which I felt comfortable on, in terms of safety. Sure, its dropout failed eventually, but this wasn’t much of a safety issue.
To be frank, the frames I’ve broken have mostly been aluminum. This material is wonderful, but can have a shorter life-cycle than carbon, steel, and titanium, and doesn’t tend to provide a great deal of warning before failing. So one must be careful with aluminum components as much as with carbon ones, despite the fact one might feel they ‘last forever.’ I think it’s important to remind ourselves that we probably wouldn’t want to ride bikes that were literally designed and manufactured to be indestructible. Such bikes would either be ludicrously expensive or prohibitively heavy; perhaps both.
We DON’T actually want to ride bikes that will last forever, but we DO want to know when to retire them and the components that comprise them.
It became evident that I’ve been building confidence - behind conscious thought - in carbon as a frame and component material for years, AND, a lot of the failures I’ve seen over the years could easily have had more to do with mechanical error than component integrity. And when I’ve seen failures in aluminum I’ve not held it against the material. This is a clear case of bias. Why didn’t I start saying aluminum was crap? Cycling is full of bias!
Part of a broad bias against carbon boils down to the lag in mainstreaming of the understanding that carbon requires more careful torquing than metals. There’s no question many components have been damaged due to over-torquing clamping surfaces. I developed a good feel for tightening fasteners more than 20 years ago, once I was a couple years into working as a shop mechanic. I had to adapt to carbon components as they came into the game, and I learned about carbon paste early on; this is an important part of the fastening equation! Carbon engineering and construction has also evolved quite a lot over the last couple decades; it’s a different world. Recent infusions of affordable, quality torque wrenches, such as Silca’s Ti-Torq, have supported the mainstreaming of proper torquing protocols; we’re making progress.
Easton Cycling is a brand I started building trust in in the mid-1990s when they were selling tubing to numerous mountain bike manufacturers building high-quality frames. My first quality MTB - a Rocky Mountain Vertex - was built with Easton aluminum tubing, and I loved it. At the time, Easton was primarily a tubing company, and they’d introduced the first aluminum hockey sticks into the market, which were a game-changer, literally. Their ethos as a company always seemed to centre on creating premium tubing at reasonable prices, and this ethos cut across a broad swath of recreational activities, from archery, skiiing and baseball, to hockey, sailing, camping and cycling. Easton entered the fray with components in 1998: handlebars and seatposts. They quickly established a reputation for producing high quality parts, which leaned toward durability and value for dollar, versus quick sales associated with low product weights and glitzy colours. This approach saw Easton outlast countless competitors through the MTB boom of the 1990s and early 2000s, and led to a gradual shift in focus to components for drop-bar bikes, with the exception of wheels. Now a sister-brand to Canadian-born Race Face, the latter brand covers the MTB side of the component spectrum.
I reached out to a contact at Easton in Vancouver, BC, to pitch an idea for a test of their carbon bars, catalyzed by my cold hands while out riding snirt. Ultimately, they were kind enough to send me a bike’s worth finishing kit, which I mounted on various bikes for what would be a series of rather rigorous trials. In the three pieces that follow, I dig into the details around three key components. I learned a lot through the process of riding these parts, and digging into some of the details while writing these parts has allowed me to draw out some useful insights around the value proposition each component offers that I think you won’t find elsewhere.
Stay tuned for PART 2, which is all about Easton’s EC70 AX handlbar, the workhorse of the gravel world!
