Page 95 - AMB Freelist

Any relief to hand and arm pump is welcome, and I found they delivered on this claim
Huge range of simple adjustability
High quality construction and customer service
Very expensive for a handlebar
Adds additional bolts you need to check on your bike
Heavy
RRP: $559.95 (ALLOY), $699.95 (CARBON) fasstcoaustralia.com.au
The Fasst Flexx eMTB Handlebar is a product that’s starting from a tough position. Often compared to the Girvin Flexstem, and being judged negatively at first glance, the biggest hurdle Fasst face is consumers giving their product a fair go. As someone who doesn’t care what’s cool or popular at any moment in time, I’m happy to try new components to see if they may offer an advantage.
The claimed advantage of the Fasst eMTB Handlebar is reducing trail chatter and feedback through your hands and arms, and therefore hand or arm pump also. It does this by flexing at pivots on either side of the stem, with damping and rebound control provided by compression elastomers and rebound washers of varying degrees of stiffness. The handlebars offer approximately 5 degrees of flex (depending on their width) in the same plane as your suspension fork, whilst remaining stiff laterally to ensure steering precision. This is where the Fasst handlebar differs drastically from a product like the Girvin Flexstem, which doesn’t flex in the same plane as your suspension and results in sub-optimal handling characteristics.
The eMTB bars I’ve been testing are built in Southern Utah from 7075 Aluminium, with 6Al-4V Titanium hardware. The bars come with three different sets of elastomers and rebound washers: soft (blue), medium (yellow), and hard (black). The fitted elastomer/rebound washer combination is red, which is the most popular setup and aimed at riders between 68kg – 99kg riding anywhere from trail to downhill.
Fasst also offer an Enduro and Downhill handlebar as part of their range. The eMTB and Enduro are the same handlebar, but they’re listed separately on Fasst’s website to indicate the handlebars have been rated for eMTB usage, with Logan Binggeli being one of their US based test riders. The bars ship at 800mm wide, and I chopped mine down to 760mm out of the box. Where the pivots are located makes aligning the bar easy, and refining your fit is helped by bar
roll indicators. Fasst do advise against rolling the bars too far forwards or backwards, as this would alter the path the bar is flexing in.
The bar is offered in two models with 8 degrees and 12 degrees of backsweep, and I opted for the 8-degree model. The bars come in a 31.8mm diameter and have 25mm of rise. The downhill bars feature mostly the same specifica- tions, although they have a 73mm centre section (as opposed to 63mm on the eMTB and Enduro bars) to allow for a direct mount stem to be used, and this wider centre section results in an overall bar width of 810mm.
I’ve got the alloy bar model, which weighs in at 550 grams uncut at 800mm. My test set weighed in at 521 grams cut to 760mm. This makes the Flexx bars over 200 grams heavier than many popular alloy DH/Enduro bars on the market. The price is worth mentioning also, as these bars aren’t cheap at $559.95. The Enduro/eMTB handlebar is also offered in a carbon model, which is said to save around 100 grams uncut, and retails for $699.95.
ON THE TRAIL:
I began riding on the red compression/rebound setup the bars came with, however I couldn’t feel a great deal of difference at first, so I moved to an all yellow (softer) setup. Swapping out the elastomers and rebound washers is a very simple process and can be done easily between rides to dial in your setup. Fasst have a sub two-minute video on their website showing this process.
I normally weigh anywhere from 82kg to 85kg, so I’m in the middle of the range for the red elastomer/rebound washer setup, and with the yellow setup I’m outside of Fasst’s recommended range of 63kg to 75kg. Despite being around 10 kilograms heavier than the recommended upper limit, Fasst Australia assured me there’s no safety issues
FASST FLEXX
EMTB HANDLEBAR
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