Originally Posted by
Moose
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.
I'm not here to debate either; it just seems obvious to me that a solution without tape is preferable to a solution with tape, Ockham's Razor and all. I don't have any problems with my bartape edges peeling up from outward hand pressure, maybe I don't ride hard enough? I've had my current red tape on for almost 2 years/5000mi now, and sure it's blackened and grubby, but it lays down just fine. And it was the cheapest tape I could buy off eBay, probably under $5.
But if the edge-direction thing is sufficient reason to others to justify bottom-up plus tape, go for it! U be U!