These simple part swaps will unlock more from your bike.
Mountain bike upgrades can get overwhelming fast. With so many components competing for your attention—and your budget—it isn’t always obvious where to start.
The good news is that some of the easiest upgrades are also the ones you can feel most. Focus on the parts that connect you to the bike and shape your riding position—you'll improve grip, comfort, fit and control without rebuilding your bike from the frame up.
Here are four easy places to start—all easy enough to tackle with an Allen key.
1. Pedals: Find Your Footing
Pedals are one of your bike’s main contact points: the places where your body physically connects to the bike. That makes their grip, shape, and feel far more important than their size might suggest.
Material is one consideration. Composite pedals like the Chester Pedal offer dependable grip and durability at an approachable price. Alloy options offer a step up on material and platform options—they add some bling to your bike too.
Platform shape matters. A concave pedal like Turbine dips slightly toward the centre, helping cradle your shoe for a more planted feel. Flatter platforms like Atlas can make repositioning easier. There’s no universal winner—the right pedal is the one that gives you the support and degree of grip you want, but an upgrade can make all the difference on your bike.
Local legend Steve Vanderhoek on his preferred pedal – Turbine
2. Grips: Small Upgrade, Big Impact.
Grips are another key contact point. Every steering input you make, and every bit of trail feedback you feel passes through them.
Diameter, rubber compound, cushioning and texture can all change how connected and comfortable the bike feels. The Half Nelson Grip delivers a thin, direct feel, while the Chester Grip comes in 31mm and 34mm diameters, with a soft rubber compound and added cushioning under the palm for riders looking for more comfort and control.
It’s a simple swap, but one you notice every minute of the ride.
Explore Grips and Other Easy Upgrades
34mm Chester Grips ready for a rip
3. Stems: Fit Meets Flare
A stem can change how your bike looks and how it fits.
The Turbine Stem brings a major pop of colour to the cockpit, but stem length also changes your reach—the effective distance between you and the handlebar.
Reach is an important part of bike fit. Too stretched out and it can be harder to stay relaxed and mobile. Too cramped and won’t have enough room to move naturally over the bike. A better-fitting cockpit helps put you in a stronger, more comfortable position for steering, weighting the bike and responding to the trail.
With multiple lengths and tons of colours available, a stem swap can be an easy way to fine-tune bike fit and add a pop of style.
EDR World Champ Elly Hoskin chose a Silver Turbine Stem for this build
4. Handlebars: Add Compliance to Your Cockpit
Handlebars affect bike fit, steering responsiveness and one key performance factor: comfort.
Comfort is the result of handlebar compliance—or controlled flex under load. In a handlebar, the goal is to take some harshness out of trail impacts without sacrificing the support and steering precision you need.
We developed our handlebars around what we call the Race Face Goldilocks (GL) Tune, targeting a preferred balance of vertical compliance and control.
Era and Era SL achieve that feel through bar-specific carbon layups, while Turbine and Atlas use precisely engineered wall thicknesses in high-grade aluminum. All offered in multiple widths and rises so you can get closer to the fit you need, on a bar made for how you ride.
The result is an upgrade that can improve cockpit fit while helping reduce the harshness reaching your hands and arms.
Atlas bars staring down a line aboard Peter Jamison's big bike
Upgrade Where You’ll Feel It
A better-performing bike doesn’t always require a major overhaul.
Better pedals give you more grip. Better grips create a better connection with your bike. A stem can dial in reach. And the right handlebar brings comfort to your cockpit.
Four straightforward upgrades. Four places where a relatively small change can pay off every time you hit the trail.