Recalled - Replaced!

The carbon Whisky No. 9 was originally on the BMC MCD

Last week a recall was put out by Quality Bicycle Products concerning certain Whisky and Salsa Cycles carbon drop bars. (See my post on that HERE) This recall affects me in that I happen to have a Whisky No 9 24° bar.

So, that's that for the carbon drop bar which now is on the Standard Rando v2. Well, it was on that bike. That's kind of part of this post.

The Whisky carbon drop bar was on my pink BMC MCD bike when I originally built that bike up in the Summer of 2018. These handle bars are very closely related to Cowchippers. If there are any differences between the two, they are very subtle, and I have Cowchipper Bars and I really have enjoyed riding them. So, these whisky No9 bars were right up my alley.

The carbon saves about 70 grams over a set of alloy Cowchippers, but it isn't about weight so much here. Actually the compliance and vibration reduction is why I would run those bars, and it is why I kept them on the pink BMC for so long. They stayed there until a test of the Redshift Sports Kitchen Sink Bar displaced them. 

That's when those Whisky bars found their way over to the Standard Rando v2. I had them off there for a bit while I ran the Winston Bar, the carbon mustache bar I tested, but they came back afterward. I've had zero issues with these bars, but apparently some have failed at the point where the brake lever clamp sits on the handle bar.

Apparently this Whisky N0 9 carbon drop bar could break at the point where the brake clamp sits.

I was thinking about drop bar levers and the clamp we have utilized for decades that affixes the lever to a handle bar. It is a decent enough way to do things on alloy bars, but I've always thought that the clamp was never really meant for an application where it has to work with a carbon handle bar. The shape of the clamp doesn't match the shape of the carbon tubing. The high leverage forces focused on one small area. The fact that carbon always fails under compression. All that seems to me to be a tough engineering puzzle and, perhaps, a different solution needs to happen with carbon drop bars. But then again- other companies seem to have it figured out. 

So, it must be doable.  Even Whisky has other carbon drops, as do Salsa, which don't seem to have this issue. Anyway, I'm not saying anyone did anything wrong here, but this is where my mind went when I considered this recall.

The replacement I used was a Cowchipper Bar in alloy.

So, anyway, the entire point here is that I had to get the handlebars off and swapped out. No big deal for me. I've changed out handle bars tons of times and it doesn't take all that long. Especially now with stems that have end caps. But before that happened with stems? This was a really tough job! This job, in comparison, was a piece of cake. 

The Cowchippers, being essentially just an alloy version of what I had on there, made everything even easier. I used a new roll of Wolf Tooth Supple Bar Tape which I had purchased earlier in the year. It's that extra thick stuff which is also extra wide. It is supposed to be black but it looks like a charcoal color to me. Ehhhhh.....It's alright. I'll admit that this is not my favorite handlebar tape, but it is what I had. 

 So, anyway, there ya go! Handle bars swapped and ready to roll once again. You may wonder about my thoughts on carbon bits here, so I'll close out this post with some of my thinking about that.

I see where people bag on carbon parts here and there. They say that they will never ride the stuff and that you are a stupid person if you do ride carbon parts. 

Well, I hope that many of you don't ride carbon fiber anything if you think that way. Oh, and toss all your aluminum stuff while you are at it, because it can fail as well. Then you are left with steel. Good ol' steel! Just don't think about how that can fail as well. (It does) But you're safe with titanium, right? 

Bontrager on the subject of warranty claims

Nope!

Bicycle parts fail. Get used to hearing about that. Especially lightweight, high performance bicycle parts. Sometimes designs aren't done well. Sometimes a manufacturing glitch happens. Sometimes it is just a few boneheads that didn't read instructions and then the whole component run gets recalled. (Yes- that has happened)  You will also hear more about recalls because companies are more proactive than ever when it comes to failures and possibilities for legal action. Sometimes it's just a few odd circumstances, but the entire run of parts gets recalled. (Again - That's happened as well before)

The result of all this recall stuff is that people get simple-minded and blanket-think a whole category/brand with a trite saying. You know- things like "Carbon sucks!". That's just goofy. I don't think that at all.

So, in this case, I figure a very small number of these failed for some reason, (we'll likely never know), and QBP is very conservative when it comes to stuff like this, so they just yanked all those bars off the market and recalled all that were ever sold, essentially. Were mine dangerous to ride? Not likely, but in this case, I have no reason to gamble on it. The bars were a gift to me and I got four years worth of riding out of them. I have other really good drop bars. No big deal to me. 

I get that some folks might be more inconvenienced than I, and I know frustration at having hit the wrong lottery can be a real thing. But in the end, we are all playing with some pretty fantastic, high-end machinery and we are definitely privileged to do so.