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Zipp Vuka Alumina Review   Bookmark and Share
images by Nick Salazar   •   May 26, 2012   •   hits 51,904

The Vuka Alumina base bar features an aero profile and straight hand holds that angle upwards by 5 degrees.
 
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The Vuka Alumina lineup isn't merely an entry-level version of Zipp's other bars. It's a re-think of their original system, it stands on its own, and has some very smart design features. There's more adjustment here than you see in any other clip-on bar system, yet Zipp keeps the hardware fairly minimal, easy to adjust, and aesthetically pleasing. The Vuka Alumina Clip is a chameleon. You can set it up to look like almost anything you want, creating almost any imaginable relationship between cups, extensions, and the base bar.


The Vuka Alumina can be set up in a wide variety of ways. Low and narrow, tall and wide, whatever you want.

The Vuka Alumina base bar features an aero profile and straight hand holds that angle upwards by 5 degrees.

The frontal profile is rather clean, but still has a bulge for the large 31.8mm stem clamp.

Here's an idea of what kind of range the Vuka Alumina setup can have. It's a chameleon.

The Vuka Alumina Clip is pretty simple, and works very well. The inner diameter is bored out to allow the arm cup clamp to rotate.

The arm cups are enormous, and very comfortable. On the left is the Pro Missile Evo bar, and on the right, the Vuka Alumina Clip.

Four width settings per side mean it's easy to dial your fit. Every bolt on the bar is a Torx T25, meaning you'll need to keep that tool in your kit.

Zipp very cleverly put each set of bolts on a different plane, such that nothing gets obscured by anything else. That means you can access any bolt at any time.

The arm cup clamps can move anywhere along the extensions - inside the extension clamp, behind it, ahead of it, or even straddling it as shown here.

Zipp has also revamped its extension lineup. The carbon extensions have also been upgraded with the textured ends that used to be exclusive to the VukaShift bars. This can eliminate the need for bar tape.

The new Race bend is Zipp's re-imagining of the traditional S-bend. Above is the new Race bend, below the original VukaShift.

Here's a comparison of the three versions of the Vuka Race bend. Top, the VukaShift version, with integrated shift bosses. It terminates in roughly a 20-degree rise. Center, the carbon version, ending in roughly a 10-degree angle, but having already gained 52mm of rise. Bottom, the alloy version which takes a slightly different path to its terminus, but is otherwise identical to the carbon version.

This is how I've set up my own set of Vuka Alumina bars. I put the arm cups clear of the extension clamp, so that I can rotate it down, to just touching the bar.

My low-stack setup is sleek and works very well.

With the cups rotated down, the cups actually sit just below the extensions. With the cups below the extensions, a straight bar works really well.

Here are the ergonomics of a straight extension with cups sitting just below. My arms are relaxed, hands basically resting right on top of the shifters.

To rotate the cups down, their clamp must be clear of the extension clamp, either behind or ahead.

You can add stack to the bars via these custom risers, which raise both the extensions and arm cups together, preserving whatever relationship you established with them.

This setup is on the extreme side, but shows what you can do with the risers, tilt adjustment, etc. Want to test out a TJ Tollakson high-hands setup? It's no problem for the Vuka Alumina.

I'm using the Vuka Alumina with Zipp's Service Course SL stem, in a -17 degree rise, 90mm long.





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