Originally Posted by
RubeRad
looks good; I see you went bottom-up and electrical taped the top. I like to try to go top-down and avoid tape altogether. Didn't work too well last time as I cut my new rear brake cable a little too short, when I'm hefting the bike around the the wheel flops, the binding cable pulls at the bartape. Annoying. But not annoying enough to make me re-do the tape or replace the brake housing!
At the risk of beating a subject into the ground, for the benefit of the newbies reading this, it must be said that bottom-to-top wrapping is generally accepted as the correct way for a reason.
Wrapping top-down exposes the edges of the tape to your hands natural tendency to move outward or downward. The edges tend to curl up and the tape will look ratty fairly quickly and wear prematurely. This happens 99% of the time for those that choose to wrap top down. The only real benefit is a slightly cleaner appearance when freshly installed.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with using tape to hold down the ends, that is the way most of the free world does it.
I am not here to debate this, like I said, this is generally accepted by almost everybody. If you truly prefer to go top-down, and it works for you, don't let me stop you.