Burgtec Ride Wide Carbon Enduro Bar and Enduro Stem MK2 – Review

The people behind Burgtec are passionate for their sport and believe in quality over quantity and products that last, even when being slightly abused. With pilots like Josh Bryceland riding their product, you know that it can take a beating.




On The Trail
Wide is good. With a width of 800mm, the Burgtec bar offers massive control for those feeling comfortable with a grip as spread out as possible. Of course it's simple enough to cut down the bars (suggested imprinted cut marks on the bar help) to your personal liking.
Going that wide on your enduro sled isn't everyone's cup of tea, but once you've gotten used to the added leverage and perfect setup for a low ready position on your bike, it's hard to go back. In combination with the short 35mm Enduro MK2 stem, the Ride Wide Carbon Enduro bar is translating every move and weight shift directly onto the trail without creating the effect of a turning radius of a bus steering wheel. With a weight of 237 grams, the bar isn't silly-light (its claimed weight is 10g heavier, so we expect our test model to be at the low end of manufacturing weight variations) and its apparent stiffness inspires confidence in hitting all the drops and jumps that you feel capable of launching yourself over.

To be honest, I never went wider than 780mm on my enduro bike, but after adapting to having to slow down a bit in sections where close obstacles on both sides of the trail require finesse to not hit your fingers or get hung up on, the added leverage does make sense in most scenarios on the rest of your ride. The added stability and precision inspires faster speeds and leaning the bike into corners becomes easier than ever. After riding the Ride Wide Bar for a couple months, I'm still contemplating once in a while to cut it down 5 to 10mm, but I'd probably miss the current feeling of riding a mini downhill bike.


If you're looking for a bar that promotes vibration damping, you have to look somewhere else. At least for lighter riders, the Burgtec Ride Wide Enduro Bar provides unfiltered feedback to the ground due to its design objective of being as strong as possible and delivering low speed responsiveness. Depending on the setup and quality of your suspension you might or might not notice the difference after a long day's ride, but unless you spend all day in a bike park, honing in on every available chatter bump section, I'd say you're safe from accelerated hand fatigue.

While I used to look for bars with an 8-degree backsweep or less, I have come to appreciate the extra degree of sweep in wider bars, as the steeper angle seems to promote a more natural position of the wrist with a wider grip on the bars. It's nothing that you think about for very long, and is really only noticeable when you swap from one bar to the other, but it works for me.


The Enduro MK2 Stem is stiff and light and just gets the job done. The graphics on top are pretty neat. Due to its short reach, its zero offset and short steer tube clamping area, it's necessary to run at least a spacer with 7,5mm height underneath, or the bar clamping area will hit a wide and flat headset cup.

As for the Bartender grip, it comes very close to my favorite setup. Its 30mm thickness works great for my medium glove size and while it features a minimalistic design it doesn't feel uncomfortably hard in your hands and is easy to hold on to. While it doesn't stoke my confidence, knowing that only a single bolt is clamping down the grip, it never came loose during the testing period. I never experienced any issues with pain or numbness during longer rides, which cannot be said for some similar-looking grips from competitors. I am not sure how much of that can be attributed to the tapered inside structure of the Bartender, but as long as it stays that way, I'm happy.

Pinkbike's Take:

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Reviews and Tech Reviews Handlebars Stems Burgtec