PRESS RELEASE
Introducing the New Range Handlebar and Stem From PNW Components
PNW have updated their Range bar and stem for 2022 adding in a 35mm diameter option and bumping the width to 800mm from 780. Read on below for all the highlights right from the source.
The Range Bar: Now Available In 31.8 & 35
Everybody loves corn dogs, right? Wrong! In a hotly contested debate, we learned that corn dogs aren’t for all of us. Which naturally brings us to the 31.8mm vs 35mm diameter dispute. We held o on making a 35mm bar until we could turn one out that we wanted to ride ourselves. Enter the Range Handlebar Gen 3, through a combo of 2014 aluminum and smart butting profiles, we made sure this larger diameter bar is an absolute dream to pilot.
If you’re an OG who’s convinced change isn’t always good (and neither are corn dogs), we got you. Our tried and true 31.8mm is better than ever with an updated butting profile to make it even more comfortable, and we've cut out some weight while we were at it.
But how? Science? Physics? Geometry? Engineers are crafty. By widening the width of the bar from 780 to 800, we’re able to extend those butting profiles and remove unnecessary material, reducing the weight of the previous Range Handlebar by as much as 25 grams.
Speaking of geometry, we kept the best parts of our Range Handlebar and baked ‘em into this new one. The tall rise and relaxed upsweep + back sweep are the essential ingredients to making all of your future singletrack sessions purely zen. The Gen 3 bars still feature a 10 degree back sweep and 5 degree upsweep, putting your arms and shoulders in a more relaxed position. And a 30mm rise in the bar means you won’t be hunched over like those creepy scoliosis tests they used to give in gym class. Plus we went with our go to, carbon mimicking, 2014 Alloy to give you great compliance and durability
A stem walks into a bar. Get it? Yeah, neither do we. And technically, it would be the other way around. All joking aside, the new Range Stem is no laughing matter. The ground-up redesign features a fully CNC'd body, machined from 6061 aluminum. It also dropped the quarantine weight by as much as 40 grams.
Details:
Range Handlebar
- MSRP: $69.00 USD
- Availability: For Sale Monday 7/19, at 9am PST
- Diameters: 31.8mm / 35mm
- Width: 800mm
- Upsweep: 5 degrees
- Backsweep: 10 degrees
- Rise: 30mm
- Material: 2014 Alloy
Colors
- Really Red
- Safety Orange
- Seafoam Teal
- Desert Dune
- Cement Gray
Range Stem
- MSRP: $79.00 USD
- Availability: Pre-Order opens Monday 7/19, at 9am PST - Expected to ship Early August
- Diameters: 31.8mm / 35mm
- Lengths: 40mm / 50mm
- Material: Fully CNC'd 6061 Alloy
Comments
Justin White
2 years, 9 months ago
"By widening the width of the bar from 780 to 800, we’re able to extend those butting profiles and remove unnecessary material"
How does this effect things when the bar is cut?
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Nathan Mobley
2 years, 9 months ago
I asked via their InstaGram...
NateMob: Would the new Range bars feel more harsh cut down to 760 than the old version? I imagine the feel was optimized around the new full length of 800 as opposed to the old 780.
PNWComponents:@natemob great question! We altered the butting profile of the handlebar to achieve the 800mm width, so the new bars should feel fairly similar when cut down to equal lengths as the old bar.
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danimaniac
2 years, 9 months ago
it might just be by growing the width during machining you can achieve a better profile because of machine limitations, or you need a certain minimum width just to have room to form the middle/bend the bar.
I guess all these bars start out just as tubular raw material and than will be Cut, Formed, maybe heat treated...
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Sethsg
2 years, 9 months ago
Wow, they forgot links, or they are very confident we lazy people will go to the trouble of finding their website.
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Graham Mattingly
2 years, 9 months ago
Pretty sure NSMB posted a press release from PNW on NSMB's website, so I don't know whether PNW has the ability to forget the links.
Just in case, here is the link
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Ryan
2 years, 9 months ago
> feature a 10 degree back sweep and 5 degree upsweep
Maybe this is a dumb question...but why do bar makers advertise back and upsweep? Isn't this measuring the same angle? You can translate backsweep into upsweep and vice versa by rotating the bars. Like if you plotted this on a graph where the center is the stem and the outside is where the handlebar ends, wouldn't that be your true angle? Or is there something there I'm missing?
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Andy Eunson
2 years, 9 months ago
What they indicate is sweep and upsweep when the rise is set perpendicular to the ground. If you roll the bar back until the bar grip area is horizontal with no upsweep, you’ll have a bit more horizontal sweep and a touch less reach. Roll forward enough and you could eliminate all back sweep and have only upsweep. Most people run their bars with the rise perpendicular to horizontal. Listing the angles this way makes it consistent so you can compare bars. It’s important to note that there is no one correct way to run your bars. You adjust the roll to fit the rider.
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Ryan
2 years, 9 months ago
Thanks for the reply but I'm still kind of stuck on my original premise. Imagine if the largest angle is say 8 degrees back (and 5 upsweep), and you can rotate the bars to they're horizontal (no more upsweep)...then the backsweep is more like 11 degrees right(?)? Why advertise the second angle at all? That only seems to complicate things rather than advertising one angle.
I'm definitely missing something here but can't quite pin it.
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Andy Eunson
2 years, 9 months ago
I hear you Ryan. I don’t think the sweep is that much of a difference rolled back. I eyeballed this recently on my workbench and bars certainly sweep back more when rolled back. But you lose rise too as well as a bit of reach when rolled back. I guess it’s just convention to measure bars this way.
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danimaniac
2 years, 9 months ago
I think you're missing what upsweep and backsweep are actually doing to your wrists.
Have you seen the article about ugly grips by uncle dave?
There was an image in there trying to show how and why you might want to support your palms more. Anyway; in that picture: Try to see what backsweep and upsweep do, isolated from each other, and it could start to make more sense.
Maybe try on an SZ Curlbar in the gym?
[I think:]
Upsweep for example helps with "elbows out", too much upsweep though will raise your shoulders and give you an aching neck and a bad position.
The wider the bar OR the more stretched out on your bike you sit(elbow extension) the more backsweep you'd use. As soon as your grips are more than shoulderwidth apart your hands/wrists "want" backsweep as they generally move on a circular path around your shoulder joints.
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