Ritchey WCS carbon bars. FAKE or GENUINE??

i bought a pair of 2nd hand ritchey wcs carbon handlebars from ebay and i am suspicious they are fake. i was hoping someone could give me confirmation either way.

what makes me suspicious is that if you look down the end of the bar the carbon is not the same thickness all the way around, which makes me question how safe these handlebars are to use. i also suspect that the clamp area is not as texturised as it should be, but without having a genuine handlebar to put side by side, i really couldnt say.

ive looked at pictures of other ritchey carbon bars and it seems that the fakes can be very hard to tell apart from the genuine handlebars by photos. the picture i have atatched with the white background is a chinese ebay replica/fake but they look just like mine and also look just like the genuine bar from what i can tell

opinions please?

thanks, sean

If it is genuine it looks like someone took it out of the reject bin.

fagin":3nutgfsc said:

If it is genuine it looks like someone took it out of the reject bin.

Click to expand...

i thought as much, the seller says its genuine but your right it doesnt look it.

...Does anyone have a genuine bar for comparison by any chance?

Sean

The real question is Safe or Snap! I know what I'm betting on.

On a serious non patronising note, I really wouldn't advise you to ride then. I've had numerous sets of carbon bars over the years and even the lightweight ones have been way thicker and always a consistent diameter.

I bought some very cheap new 3T carbon road bars from an eBay vendor in Hong Kong , when they arrived I gave the drops a bit of a pull apart (10 lbs maybe)and heard some small cracks , so I gave them a bigger pull (50 lbs ?) and one end broke off in my hands , I am glad it happened off the bike and they must be 100% fake (as I think yours are)

Re:

/\ thanks

Does anyone have a genuine wcs bar for comparison? Also does anyone know the email address for ritchey? Id like to get conformation from them

Cheers!

Here the info from Ritchey. There is a link in one of the answers but not sure it gives the email address

http://ritcheylogic.com/content/tech/be ... -products/

Re. Photo, the bar at 2 o clock is v. thin. Is that just the very end or is it like that all the way along?

No idea how to tell from genuine.

02gf74":26nq7bp6 said:

Re. Photo, the bar at 2 o clock is v. thin. Is that just the very end or is it like that all the way along?

No idea how to tell from genuine.

Click to expand...

its hard to tell just by looking down the end of the bar, but they are the same at the other end, they are just thin at 6 oclock instead

Definitely dodgy then.
Ritchey stuff has really decent quality control in my experience.

Ebay is full of dodgy carbon stuff from China and HK.