It’s starting to get expensive. This is all outdoor riding, usually long intervals make lots of sweat, although I’m “flushing the bars after each ride. I changed my bar wrapping style to figure-8 so I could leave little exposed holes to flush with water after each ride:
When I install the bars I’ve been taking extra care to not break or scratch the anodizing, I’ve tried coating the surface in Boeshield, and again I’m still blasting the bars with water each time I do a sweaty ride. I’ve thought of blasting the area after each ride with compressed alcohol; spraying other chemicals in there seems bad. I tried some helicopter tape under the shifter and the shifters wiggled/moved when off-road.
I’d love to hear your recommendations on how to stop the corrosion. I believe I’d have this same problem with composite handlebar material. Replacing bar tape every week or two gets expensive and annoying, though I am very good at it now, lol.
I tried this with helicopter tape and I can’t seem to get the shifters tight enough to not either break-through the tape or tear the tape when the shifters move in off-road riding.
Is there a chance it could be your cleaning products, rather than sweat? Thanks to a dodgy cirulatory system, I’m a seriously heavy sweater (to the point it sometimes ruins my life) and I have yet to destroy any aluminium components. Unless you have some kind of severe hormomal imbalance or endocrine system issue causing you to sweat out important things, or stomach acid? I’ve seen a lot of destroyed trainer bike handlebars come through the workshop, but only ever after years of use, not weeks…
I second the suggestion to use carbon bars, or consider a set of chromed steel bars from Nitto, I believe they still make a 31.8 steel road bar, but it might be worth checking out the sweat situation first…
I believe you guys are telling me that you don’t typically see this problem with CF bars. I have a bar in mind to replace it, though I’ll miss the slight flare.
It’ll happen eventually, but usually takes a lot longer to begin. Saying that, at the rate you’re eating through alu bars… who knows Do you wear through brake hoods very quickly too, or is it just the bars themselves that are dissolving?
edit: also, assuming you’re riding indoors, do you put anything over the bars? I ride with a large towel draped over the whole bars and top tube to keep sweat away from expensive things
Maybe try storing your bike in conditioned space? If I understand correctly, “pitting corrosion” of aluminum - which seems to be what you’re experiencing - is a function of salt and humidity. You’ve tried reducing the salt by rinsing. Maybe try reducing the humidity via air conditioning or a dehumidifier?
For flat bars, there are lots of titanium options (which I’d favor over carbon fiber, because of their respective failure properties). But not so much for drop bars…
Not sure what your local used market is like, but where I am, you can pick up a used carbon bar for what a new aluminum one costs . . . as long as you’re okay with a 42cm or wider width - no one seems to want those anymore.
I guess I’ll be the voice of caution: there’s no way to know short of professional ultrasound whether a used carbon bar might have prior damage. And bar failure can obviously be catastrophic. So this is not where I would choose to economize.
(I’ve owned one carbon bar, a Salsa Cowchipper, which I did get used from a friend I trust. I liked it fine - and then Salsa recalled them all. Now I’m sticking to metal bars.)
Also consider the way you’re installing components and the torques you’re using. Your first image makes me question this - on all of the corroded bars I’ve seen, the corrosion has been on the top side of the bar, not on the underside / back of the bar where the lever clamp bites.
Aligning with this, it occurred to me that the flushing with water may be helping, but might also be part of the problem.
If the area isn’t drying out under the tape the corrosion might not be entirely salt related, and simply a galvanic corrosion due to two different metals being in contact, which is not good when wet, and worsened, rather than caused by salt.
Galvanic corrosion absolutely affects carbon too. Carbon frames are most likely to fail where the carbon is in contact with metal (headset bearings, BB inserts, dropouts, etc), because the galvanic corrosion can degrade the resin. The damage to bars as shown by OP might be different with carbon, and may or may not take longer. It may not be as obvious though, as it may take less visible damage for the carbon integrity to be affected to a dangerous extent.
My understanding was that Al/carbon galvanic corrosion of frame inserts was down to failure of the resin bonding the two components together. There is no resin bond between carbon bars and drop bar brake lever clamps.
With headset cups in carbon frames, isn’t the problem mostly the greater volume of Al corrosion products? That is not really applicable to brake lever clamps.
It’s definitely more than just the bonding of inserts into frames.
I’ll need to try to remember to go dig out the information, but it was mentioned by a carbon expert in a rare example of a really good and genuinely informative GCN video.
To be fair, it maybe isn’t galvanic corrosion in the same way, and as much the constant micro stresses and movements. I need to go read up on it again.
Do you wear through brake hoods very quickly too, or is it just the bars themselves that are dissolving?