Chinese carbon bars (Toseek)

PB Forum :: Road Cycling and Touring
Chinese carbon bars (Toseek)
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flag Fenwick458
Posted: Jan 19, 2021 at 2:20 Quote
recently discovered my bars are too wide, so started looking for some 420mm, and stumbled across a Toseek Chinese carbon integrated bar and stem for only £38 delivered on ebay. I did a few searches and found a few other bits on the web about them, some saying they are terrible and dangerous, and some saying they are fine. thought "what do I have to lose" and bought some to see how good they were
approx. 5 weeks later they arrived, in a thin wrap of bubble wrap and a grey plastic bag. thats not the packaging material I'd chose to send them in, but obviously the Chinese must have their reasons for this!
they were cracked on one side, looked like that had been pressed from the sides which is the force they are probably not designed to take. I raised a claim with the seller that day, and had to wait a few days. I got no response from the seller and escalated to eBay as soon as I could, and immediately got a full refund, including p&p.
after carefully examining the rest of the bars, decided that they look pretty good and strong, and if they hadn't have been damaged in the post I would have fitted them, so I decided to buy another set from the same seller, again nothing to lose. The second set were approx £48, exact same type must have just been a price increase.
next set arrived only 3 weeks later, in the same inadequate packaging, but luckily this time they looked good and hadn't been damaged in the post
I made a jig so I could fasten them into the vice and test them before fitting, I tested the 1st set to destruction on the cracked side (which was easier than I thought, I was led to believe carbon fibre wouldn't shear off in a clean break, but it did) and tried as hard as I could to break them by pushing down as hard as possible on the unbroken side, and with both hands on the top of the bars , but couldn't break them. a Friend also tried and couldn't break them, they seem strong.
I then put the new set in the jig and tried them, they feel strong, I'm happy to ride with them so I will be fitting them when I get round to it. the amount of flex you get is very similar to my other 2 alloy road bike bars.
looking at the videos it looks like the stem is flexing, it looks worse than it is, that movement comes from the jig I had it's not the right sixe, just some 1" pipe thats shimmed up.
video links below
Part 1, testing the broken set
Part 2, breaking the 1st set
Part 3, testing the second set
flag R-M-R
Posted: Jan 19, 2021 at 2:53 Quote
Interesting. Thank you for posting!
flag Fenwick458
Posted: Jan 22, 2021 at 11:05 Quote
another thing to be aware of, carbon fibre splinters are absolutely savage and you should be careful. I tried to destroy the bit that snapped off, it was incredibly strong and put up a good fight, and as a result I got a load of splinters stuck in my hand...
from my point of view, me (80kg rider) is not going to be able to break these bars on my road bike, and if I do manage to break them, i'd imagine i'd have bigger problems!
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