Originally Posted by
Seattle Forrest
How? They're going to see a lot more kNs when you hit a pothole at speed than I can think of how to produce in my living room, at least without actually breaking them.
Yes and no... if you force the drops together by standing them on the floor and pushing down, that's similar to most of the loads the bars will see, and your judgement should tell you how much is enough to put your mind at rest... most folks would probably be able to break anything this light that shape if they tried hard enough I'd say, but my experience with these and my materials knowledge leads me to believe that even a nasty set of carbon bars will be quite a bit stronger than any ally bar of the same weight, barring all but perhaps the most egregious examples of poor quality.
Where you're right to be nervous though is the point where the bars emerge from the stem, and probably where the levers clamp on, which can't be assessed until the bars are fitted, obviously... so just give them another torture test as soon as you mount them and fit the levers.
Its perfectly possible to apply equivalent force in a continuum from negligible all the way up to catastrophic. And unlike with ally, doing so won't induce fatigue; if they survive the sort of loads I'm advocating as DIY QC, they'll have proved themselves fit for service.
As I already mentioned, I'm three for three - IME it's pretty hard to go wrong here. If you're still skeptical, maybe I'll shoot a vid showing the sort of tests I'm talking about.