We’ve been hankering for them ever since Renthal first released their amazing push-on grips, but now the wait is finally over, Renthal Lock-On’s are here!
As with their push-on grips these are all about performance, and as such you won’t find any fancy colours. The reason for this is that different colour additives affect the attributes of a grip. Some colours make a grip harder, and others make it softer. These grips are the colour they are because that’s how you have to make them if you want the specific qualities that these grips offer. The push-on grips were, and are, available in firm, medium, soft or kevlar compound, with the kevlar being very similar to soft in feel yet much harder wearing.
Because Renthal have had to use a slightly thinner layer of rubber with these new lock-on grips (as with any lock-on) they’ve decided to ditch the firm offering in these grips because it was simply too firm. What they’ve done instead though is offer another compound at the other end of the spectrum; the ‘Super Comfort’. It really is incredibly soft, so soft in fact that the feedback from some of the World Cup riders using this grip was that it was too soft! How can it be too soft? Well it’s so soft that when you twist your hands on it you can feel it move, which in extreme circumstances can reduce control. Apparently Sam Hill runs the medium compound because in a race situation he feels control is more important than comfort. All that said though, we still reckon a load of riders are going to love this new compound, especially on a trail bike.
What else is there to know about these grips? Well, they’re made right here in the UK and the one major difference to the ODI system is that the collars are permanently fixed to the grips. This does of course mean that you can’t save money when the grips wear out by reusing the old collars, but Renthal have done this to avoid the old ‘rocking’ grip syndrome that you often get with loose collars. The design also results in a very neat and smooth transfer between the grip and the collar so it won’t dig into your hand. The pattern of the grips is identical to the push-on’s, but these are ever so slightly fatter. Don’t worry though, they’re still nice and thin. All we’d like to see now is maybe a something like a half-waffle design so that they’re even better when conditions get really bad. Oh, and for the weight weenies amongst you, a pair of these weigh 114g.
Price: Super Comfort, Soft & Medium £21.99, Kevlar £24.99
The other new product from Renthal are these new Fatbar Lite bars…
As the name suggests these can basically be described as a lighter version of the already legendary Fatbar. At around the 360g mark the Fatbar is a bit on the porky side for many peoples trail bike tastes, and the 780mm width is also too wide. At 269g these bars are almost 100g lighter though, and yet they’re still every bit as strong. How’s that possible I hear you ask. Well the crucial fact is that these bars are only 740mm wide. If you were to chop 40mm off the regular Fatbars you wouldn’t save nearly as much weight, but if you’re not having to make a bar strong enough to deal with being so wide then you can use less material in the whole bar…hence the big weight saving. So, despite looking so similar, and having the exact same 7° backsweep and 5° upsweep shape, the two bars are actually substantially different. As with the Fatbar though you get a choice of 10, 20, 30 or 40mm rise, so all you need to do now is decide which one of all these many options is for you.
Price: £59.99
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www.renthalcycling.com
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