Easton Havoc Carbon Riser Mountain Bike Handlebar

Easton's new Havoc Carbon DH Handlebar is a lot like its alloy sibling, the Havoc Aluminum. Both are monster wide, at 750mm, and both are built to be scary strong. The scarier thing is that the carbon edition is a whopping 80 grams lighter. While that may not seem like a lot of weight, each gram counts as you start to fatigue on your 10th run down Garbanzo. And if you follow DH racing, you know that every racer on every level is now trying to get his or her bike as light as possible all without sacrificing strength.Don't ignore the latter point on your way to lightening up your DH machine. Your very survival depends on a tough handlebar that can withstand hundreds of thousands of feet of rugged descending. The fact that a brand as legendary as Easton is building carbon bars tough enough for DH tells you something about how far carbon has come, but all carbon isn't identical. Easton's in this game because their TaperWall system lets them build exceptionally smooth layups without any flaws or stress risers that you might find in other methods of construction. Translation: A stress riser is a wrinkle in the fabric of a layup, a single point that can soak up more load than was intended. By contrast, Easton's TaperWall is designed to work as an entire system, not only eliminating stress risers but allowing the whole bar to work as a single unit, passing all loads across its entire length.So while the Havoc Carbon DH Handlebar is exceptionally light, Easton's internal testing sh