Posted on July 21, 2022 by Cory Benson
Freeze’s Frozen mountain bike grips were already ice-cool from the start, made from a clear rubber that let you customize the look of your cockpit by putting stickers or really anything under the grips for a personalized look. But now they just got even cooler, thanks to a genuinely unique new tool-free lock-on clamp that makes them more secure and easier to change from one design under the grip to the next.
The idea is simple. Clear rubber grips mean you can see what’s under them on the bar.
Wrap your favorite stickers, or some motivational words on the bar.
Then, slip on the grips and ride custom!
The UV-stable Frozen grips feature a 12-sided faceted shape on the outer edge that gives something solid to hold onto and thinner ribs on the inner edge for finer grip under your thumb and first fingers.
Freeze sells the ~31mm outer diameter x 133mm long Push On clear grips for 29€ including your choice of around 20 pre-set patterned labels.
Or for the same price, they give you the ability to upload your own graphics (png, jpg, heic raster or pdf, ai, eps vector files) for each side which they will print out and ship with your grips.
That’s all cool, but the new Frozen Twist Clamp lock-on mountain bike grips are even cooler.
The Frozen grip shape is the same but it adds a tool-free clamp on the end, that adds 10mm in overall length. Freeze didn’t want me to take too detailed a photo of the plastic wedge in this not-final pre-production prototype, but it’s a simple system, a cross between slip fit plumbing pipes that twist-t0-lock and a conventional lock-on grip.
Check out the all-alloy prototype below…
The body of the grip gets a rigid clear recycled plastic inner element that sits on the bar with tabs that extend out at the end – molded to the UV-stable TPE rubber, not glued. There, a tapered compression wedge (I think made of Polyamide 12 plastic in final production to prevent oxidation) slides over the tabs and a matching threaded alloy ring is screwed on. As you spin the outer ring by hand, it clamps the wedge & grip’s tabs against the part preventing rotation.
All with a cleaner look than conventional lock-on grips that’s also tool-free. So no more stripped-out 2.5mm lock-on clamp screws. And you can more easily swap the custom look of your Frozen grips with new stickers in just a few seconds now.
The new Freeze Frozen Twist Clamp lock-on grips sell for 49€ with silver, black, or gold anodized aluminum Twist Clamps. The grips are being produced right now in Germany. You can per-order them now, but they will ship in around 2-3 weeks.
Cory Benson is the EU Tech Editor of Bikerumor.com.
Cory has been writing about mountain bikes, enduro, cyclocross, all-road, gravel bikes & bikepacking on and off for over 25 years, since before several of these even had names in our industry.
Prior to that (and at times, concurrently), Cory worked as an Architect specializing in environmental sustainability, a IBD bike shop designer & consultant, an independent product designer, a bike shop mechanic, and a mountain biking instructor.
Based in the Czech Republic for over 15 years, Cory spends much of his time traveling around Europe, riding bikes, and meeting directly with many of cycling’s key European product developers, industry experts & tastemakers for an in-depth review of what’s new, and what’s coming next. A technical off-road rider at heart since the 1990s, Cory’s cycling has evolved to cover everything from the wide range of riding aero road bikes on dirt roads to thrashing enduro bikes in the European bikeparks & trail centers, with plenty of XC, CX & gravel in between.
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