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Re: Road bike bar wrap? [Titanflexr] [ In reply to ]
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Titanflexr wrote:
Classic, bottom to top. Park and Zinn have been my bible on such things: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5MzIiv7pewE

Finish with silicone rescue tape for a clean, non-sticky finish (switched from the classic Super33 as the finishing tape; never used the supplied tape strips).

Wrap now stops before the tops given the aero road bars on my roadie.

Are we talking self-fusing silicone tape like this? (There are many manufacturers, this is just the first Amazon link I pulled up.) If so, then yes, I agree, I like that stuff a lot.

Silca's handlebar tape comes with finishing tape that seems like it's silicone. The thing is, those finishing tapes do adhere to themselves, but they are reusable, unlike self-fusing tape. I mean, it won't look perfect if you retape your bars and reuse the tape, but it looks acceptable. I wonder what that stuff is made of.
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Re: Road bike bar wrap? [ In reply to ]
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Alcohol takes that gummy stuff off fairly easily.
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Re: Road bike bar wrap? [weiwentg] [ In reply to ]
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weiwenteg, Thanks for noticing our finishing tape, I spent a lot of time choosing all the little elements of this product base on my own pet peeves! It's actually a hydrophobic TPU, but uses 3M adhesive which is temporarily adjustable and then fuses to itself.

The key here is in the adhesive quality and brand, the really good stuff is worth the extra money almost always, certainly that's true with electrical tape.

We've had some complaints with our bar tape about how aggressive the 3M adhesive on the tape itself is, as it can be hard to remove from the bar when replacing the tape (acetone works well) but it is necessary for all of the various wrapping strategies people are employing with modern bars. To Tom A's point, with aero top bars you need to wrap top down to avoid having a messy finishing tape thing happening in the highest wear area of the bar, but if your tape adhesive isn't robust enough, you will get pealing of the tape due to the hand forces just above the brake hoods.

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Re: Road bike bar wrap? [ In reply to ]
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I did find some silicone tape at Home Depot, but at almost a dollar per foot, I only used it to finish off. Frankly, it's so flat here, I'm on the clip-ons 98% of the time. That three-year-old Bontrager bar tape looked brand new. Oh well, it'll go on the push mower come spring.

◼︎ We shall soon be in a world in which a man may be howled down for saying that two and two make four, in which people will persecute the heresy of calling a triangle a three-sided figure, and hang a man for maddening a mob with the news that grass is green. - Chesterton
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