A Cheap Word of Warning

Ed1973 wrote:

So I was at Cannock the other day and just did a small drop at low speed, and bang my handlebars snapped. I bought them from an app called a word that rhymes with ‘bish’ and were carbon. That will teach me to buy cheap. I knew the day wasn’t going well when after about about 10 mins I realised my b screw was missing so I couldn’t change from my largest to smaller cogs. So from now on it will be reputable retailers only!!

Maybe they weren't even carbon fibre, some of the nastiest cheapest components from 'bish' cough or other places like Aliexpress are actually fibre glass not carbon fibre at all. You can do a conductivity test to check and admittedly most cheap carbon fibre components are still carbon fibre but the ridiculously cheap components are often fibre glass.

I bought a couple carbon fibre handlebars from aliexpress for about £8 delivered but the it was pretty obvious they weren't carbon fibre when they arrived as 6061 was clearly printed on them. I don't think I even complained as they seemed so nice and decent quality for that money. They weren't even wrapped in a carbon fibre style tape.

People have bought fantastic quality carbon fibre handlebars from aliexpress for lowish money, they have done their research, read the reviews and seen recommendations for the supplier on youtube, forums etc but unless you are going to do your homework it's better to play safe and companies like Planet X do such components for reasonable prices who have correctly certified high quality parts. I think I've seen them do carbon fibre drop handlebars for as low as £29.99 on occasion as a promotion although there is £4 on top to pay for postage per order.