Ritchey WCS Carbon Flat Bar Review
Bike cockpit setup is a very personal thing, and you can find all sorts of advice on how to do it. The latest style is to go very, very wide and with a short-ish stem. The argument is that this setup gives you the control of the wide bar, and the ease of lofting the front end of the short stem. It is a very BMX-esque sort of setup.
In my BMX days, I was a huge fan of wide bars. I found that the wider bars gave you more leverage to crank against, and made the bike physically wider so you were harder to pass. I had a set of 27" wide CW bars that were as wide as the rules permitted, and I loved them.
For my mountain bike, I went the same way with the bars, but I found I needed a longer stem to keep the weight on the front wheel; if I didn't, the bike would wheelie and flop around on climbs. I also found that - much like my road bike - a lower stem stack height and bar height would lower my entire profile and make me more aero. So my setup on my hardtail was a super-wide Easton EA-70 flat bar and a long-ish 90mm stem.
This worked well enough, so I moved it over to the Faze when I got it. This setup was also quite a bit lighter than the Norco-branded riser bar and short stem that it came with.
It became clear very quickly that while the stem length was right, something was just not right with the bars. No matter what I did with them, I just could not get my hands comfortable. And the wide bars seemed like they were getting in the way more often than not.
I did some thinking about the problem, and it occurred to me that my riding style had undergone a subtle change. I do a lot of road miles and spend a lot of time on the road bike. This has taught me to sit and spin at a high (90-100 RPM) cadence to maximize my power output. The rear suspension on the Faze allows me to spend much more time seated, rather than standing and mashing, so I don't need the extra leverage.
Further research showed that most flat bars come in 560-580mm widths. The 685mm Easton bar is really a Weird Harold in that respect. A measurement of the distance between the hoods on my road bike cinched the deal; I ordered up a Ritchey WCS bar in 580mm.
This bar was the missing piece of the puzzle. The narrower bar put my hands in about the same place as they are on my road bike. The positions aren't perfectly identical - my hands are rotated 90 degrees compared to the hoods on my road bike - but the position of my torso and arms is about the same. Now I can generate power from spinning and my hands are in the right place.
I can still stand and mash - the same way I can when sprinting on the road bike - and in an unforeseen benefit, the narrower bars make it easier and quicker to thread through gaps in trees.
Oddly enough, all those XC racers who have been specifying narrow bars know what they are doing! Go figure!
The bars themselves are very stiff and light. If you really reef on them - I stalled on a root on an uphill climb during one race and needed a panic effort to kick the bike over it - they will flex a little (I got it to creak and I felt the bar flex) but there was no damage done. The bars appear to spring back from impacts and heavy loads.
My only complaint is that the diameter is a tick on the narrow side. Brakes and shifters have to be tightened all the way down to grip the bars, and my Ergon lock-on grips and the Poplock for my fork lockout wouldn't lock down at all until shimmed with some electrical tape.
Aside from that, these bars have worked great - and the clear carbon finish with the WCS rainbows looks very pro. Recommended.
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