from Rookie’s keyboard,
Hello, friends
Time for a short tip today.
If you ever find yourself in a situation when you don’t have the right grips for your bike, consider using drop bar tape either temporarily (until that China package arrives) or permanently if you like the feeling.
This practice is not common, but it’s decent and has the following positives.
1. Maximum Customization
Bar tape gives you complete control over the thickness and length of the final product.
Some riders with big hands purposefully choose bar tape to increase the diameter of the bar and make it more comfortable for their anthropometry.
2. Comfort
If regular grips are too hard on your hands, bar tape can help because it’s softer. The effect can be amplified even further by wrapping two layers instead of one.
3. Works With Oddly Shaped Bars
Bar tape is not reserved solely for drop bar handlebars. It can be used for other handlebars with lots of curves such mustache or butterfly bars.
4. Bar Tape On Bar Ends
Bar ends are considered archaic, but they’re still in use as shown by the great number of products available on the market.
If standard bar ends are too firm for your liking or condition, you can use bar tape to cover them and essentially turn your handlebars into bullhorns.
5. Cheap
A standard bar tape package comes with:
- 2 rolls of bar tape (one for each side of the handlebars)
- finishing tape
- 2 bar plugs
If you rely on bar tape for your grips, you will need very little material. Maybe 1/3 of a roll.
One bar tape will last you a long time.
6. Color options
Bar tape comes in a variety of vivid colors and graphic patterns which aren’t found on standard grips.
7. Easier to Install
Slip-on grips can be frustrating, especially for newbies. Of course, there are different ways to facilitate their installation such as an air compressor, a deodorant, or some sort of alcohol, but those items aren’t present in everyone’s arsenal.
Conversely, bar tape doesn’t require any of that to install it.
8. Light
The piece of bar tape needed to make grips is notably lighter than standard grips.
Ofc, the saved grams are too few to matter.
And now the negatives…
1. Less Grip
Bar tape creates less friction than new grips. For that reason, its a suboptimal solution for aggressive mountain biking and BMX riding.
2. Instability
Even if you wrap the tape super tight, there’s a chance that it will unravel if you do lots of technical riding.
3. Ugly (according to some)
The inner side of the bar tape grip has to be secured either with electrical tape or the finishing tape that comes in the package. Some people may consider the final product unsightly compared to standard grips that do not require additional tape.
4. Inconvenient Readjustments
Every time you remove a shifter or a brake lever, you will have to unwrap and re-wrap the tape.
Meanwhile, grips with bolt locks allow you to do the same procedure a lot faster.
Ergo Grips
Many people like using bar tape because it’s softer and more joint-friendly but dislike the downsides.
Hence some switch to ergonomic grips which are also kinder to the joints but without the negatives of bar tape.
Tips and Tricks
- If you want to wrap more than one layer of bar tape, but you don’t have enough of it, you can first wrap a piece of an old inner tube around the bars and then follow with the bar tape.
- If you want to reduce the movement of the bar tape, you can wrap the bars with sticky double-sided tape and then follow with the actual bar tape. The downside of this approach is that you will have to deal with extra stickiness when you want to replace the bar tape. If the sticky tape is particularly strong, the bar tape may rip when removing it.
In conclusion
Bar tape can be used on risers (and other non-drop-bar models). The practice has the following advantages:
- softer
- lighter
- cheap
- custom diameter of the grip area
- colorful
- adaptive to oddly shaped handlebars
- easy to install and remove
2. Grips made out of bar tape could perform poorly when the bike is used for aggressive riding (MTB, BMX…etc.) In that case, I’d rather use lock-on grips.
Until next time,
Rookie
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