Wrapping drop bars in reverse
 

Starting from the top to the drop without using electrical tape,will it hold up decent if you ride exclusively on the hoods? Anyone wrap this way ?

KF

Wrap it any direction you want. I've done both and have had no problems.

I've done it that way in the past. It is nice to tuck the end into the plugs.

It has been a while since I've wrapped that way, but it just seems to curl up around the edges of the tape quicker that way.

But, it never hurts to give it a try. Riding from the drops, you would be pulling on the wrap in the opposite direction than when riding from the tops of the bars anyway.

What kind of tape?

Sorry I meant ride exclusively on the hoods not the drops.

Haven't decided just yet.

The curling is always worst near the corners of the and the straight section heading towards the brakes. But, I suppose it wouldn't be bad if you're actually on the hoods.

Why don't you get some cheap bar tape, and wrap one side one direction, and the other side the opposite direction, and see how it holds up.

Or, if your current tape is holding up fine, then don't worry about it.

Some tapes are more prone to lifting than others. Softer cork tapes and cloth without shellac might tend to roll or lift or whatever we call that. Cloth with shellac hasn't been a problem in my experience.

I go both ways.

Not that there is anything wrong with that.

That's the only way I wrap my bars from the top down. I start with a piece of electrical tape, holding the beginning of the tape than wrap over the end to hide it and continue down to the drop end plugs. I ride 1200 miles a summer for 3 or 4 years with no tape degradation. I do use high quality cork with self-adhesive backing.

We're not here to judge lol :roflmao2:

Sounds like a good idea :thumb: QUOTE=CliffordK;18331804]The curling is always worst near the corners of the and the straight section heading towards the brakes. But, I suppose it wouldn't be bad if you're actually on the hoods.

Why don't you get some cheap bar tape, and wrap one side one direction, and the other side the opposite direction, and see how it holds up.

Or, if your current tape is holding up fine, then don't worry about it.[/QUOTE]

Non-adhesive: top-down, secured by the plugs or barcons
Adhesive: bottom-up, secured by finishing tape provided

Schwing!

I go top down. It takes awhile for the cloth tape (usually Newbaums) to start curling over, but it does happen. Often by then I'm ready to replace it or wrap over it anyway, so no big deal. I'm ok doing it every couple years. It gets dirty, faded, etc anyway.

I usually start at the top if it's my bike, like Cervelo13 since my hands spend more time on the top of the bars than at the very end of the drops and people tell me it's wrong. They can do it the "right" way on their bike. I go bottom to top on flip bikes that need to have everything just so in appearance.

This. If you ride the drops, probably best to wrap bottom up, but otherwise, works both ways.

Thanks Robbie! Going to give it a go.

But if you're wrapping from the bottom up, the direction of the wrap should be in the direction your thumb points when you wrap your hand around the bar at any location... if you're going from the top down, is that reversed?

I always wrapped my bars from the brake levers, going out to the stem and bar ends.
Worked really well since the 80's for me. Doing so prevented me from catching the edge of the tape so it stays put with no gaps ever developing

So you cut it and wrap two separate sections?

I've always, no matter whether cloth or (shudder) plastic, gone top down, wrapping 'away' (in the direction of my fingers) as that tends to keep the tape tighter. When I redid SWIMPAL's bike with brifters, and used some other kind of gelly tape, I ended up doing it bottom to top.

The only place I have ever had an issue with top down is on the ramps. But modern bars don't have ramps, they have hoods instead, so it should be fine. I have traditional bend bars, so bottoms up!

Great! A lot more good reports than I expected. Will definitely do this when my bars arrive.

thanks guys!

KF

No, I do not cut the tape before installing it. I just do a dry run (without removing the paper strip the protects the adhesive under the tape. with the wrapping to find out how much tape each end away from the brake lever is needed. I only cut the ends by the stem and the bar ends as I finish.....

Cloth goes top-down. So does Benotto plastic tape. Everything else goes bottom-up. The following is my tape saga, a longer winded version of this. Continue at your peril

In my ill-spent youth, when cloth was king, gel was something you put in your hair, cork was whispered-about unobtanium, and Benotto plastic was for racer types whose hands sweated much less than mine, wrap jobs went from stem to bar end. I did it that way, and everyone I knew did it that way. It never dawned on me to do it any other way, and I never saw anything holding down the tape at the stem end. Not little strips of what looks like electricians tape. Not actual electricians tape. Not twine. And if you want padding on the bars, you used multiple layers of tape or <shudder> that foam rubber stuff that looked like what is now used to insulate outdoor pipes.

Of course, the cotton tape of choice, at least in my circles, was Tressorex or Tressostar (never did figure out the difference), which had adhesive on the entire backside of the tape. As others have said, it got ratty eventually, but it held down pretty well.

Once padded tapes. cork tapes, gel tapes, and the like came along, the game changed. The adhesive did not go to the edge of the backside of the tape, making edge turn-up more of an issue. Also, because it is thicker, you can't just shove extra tape into the bar end, willy-nilly, and whack the plug into place like you can with cloth tape - suddenly, trimming and some degree of manual dexterity and hand-eye coordination was required, attributes of which I do not have an over-abundance. That's when I started going bottom-to-top and learned that the average tape company includes the absolute minimum possible amount of finishing tape (for next to the stem), and make those strips with an adhesive that sticks most effectively to itself, making any accidental fold-over whilst handling into a minor disaster, all of which thereby makes life unnecessarily difficult for the mechanically declined.