79pmooney

On the cork and "cork tapes, I am not much help. I used true cork once many years ago. Nice, tough to apply right and quite sensitive to damage. When I read about that cork coming from the same, many hundreds of years old olive trees that were having too much bark removed every year to supply the world market with corks for wine, I decided I should spare the trees and spend my money elsewhere.

I wrapped a handlebar once with leather, tennis racquet style. Really, really nice! My Mooney sported that wrap for 15 years. Rips got treated with sailor's whipping that were true permanent repairs. Only reason I don't still ride it is that both the stem and bars are nearing their expiration date and I don't want to be riding them when it arrives.

Good old black cloth tape has always worked well for me. Now, in concession to age, I double it up. (First wrap can be from the last wrap. Cut out the worn parts. Doesn't need to be continuous since it is never seen.) I also like the Fizak wraps, some more than others but since I don't save the wrappers, I can never remember what the good ones were. My TiCycles sports a good Fizak wrap. Has had it for probably 7 years. Rode 130 miles on it Sunday and didn't think of the "cockpit" once the whole day.

Ben

DiabloScott

Benotto used to be like 99¢. It faded and got brittle after a couple months. I didn't think anybody really liked it.

Good bikes had Bike Ribbon.

The new cork stuff is definitely too thick at the edges... I like how it feels but it doesn't look good.

Back to Fizik for me next wrap job.



Splash tapes were fun back in the day.

taguy4

The Soma Benotto tape in white isn't available any more. I checked with Yellow Jersey and the guy there said Benotto is done for good. There is some imitation Benotto tape from a UK seller on eBay for very cheap but the closest they have to white (actually the Benotto tape was more of an off-white) is silver. But it's good someone is keeping the tradition alive.

Yes, you definitely need a good set of gloves when you use the Benotto tape! If you had a racing bike of any caliber back in the 80's that was the stuff you used, and you just got used to it kind of abusing your hands and didn't give it a lot of thought.

Like I mentioned earlier I really like cloth tape, too, on the right kind of bike. It would never look right IMO on a mid to late eighties racing bike, especially one that has the brake cables running underneath the tape like the Campy C-record ones did. Plus when you buy cloth tape they barely give you enough to do a set of handlebars WITHOUT cables having to run underneath it.

Thanks for the great ideas!

canklecat

My Centurion Ironman came from the seller back in June with fresh black classic thin tape. Handsome and useless.

Pretty soon my hands were numb, wrists and elbows were aching. I remembered why I used Grab Ons back in the 1970s-'80s on my Motobecane.

For awhile this summer I used a roll of nice looking ace wrap in a summery seersucker pattern. It just happened to be in my first aid kit -- the stuff was rolled so tightly it took up very little room. One day when my wrists were aching I stopped and wrapped the bars in that tape. Looked nice for a few rides before it got scuffed up. I wouldn't mind having a good durable bar wrap in seersucker.

Then I added some dense foam rubber under the ace wrap. Comfy but ugly.

A month ago I tried the plain thin wrapped bars again. Still too much vibration on chipseal.

A couple of weeks ago I tried the inner tube trick -- took an old tube, cut it into ribbons and used it as bar wrap. Dang, it's effective. I don't even need gloves with the stuff.

Ugly, though. Maybe I should have cut off the valve. And the patched places.

Anyway, I ordered some Velo shockproof bar wrap. Looks the same as the inner tube, minus the patches, Bontrager label and Schrader valve.

You can keep that Benotto and similar classic tape. It's pretty. Pretty uncomfortable.

taguy4

I wouldn't say Benotto is useless; it's just that nowadays people expect a lot more comfort and convenience out of their bikes than they did back when it was popular in the bike racing world. Back then bar tape was basically just to cover the bare handlebars and add aesthetics to a bike; racers wore padded bike gloves to minimize rode vibration. Now people expect a bike's handlebar tape to baby their hands, and judging by some of these posts people now seem to value this quality of today's bike tape more than anything else. I suppose to these people Benotto is probably useless. I don't mean that in a derogatory manner: it's just where people place their values, and everyone is going to be a little different.

I also wouldn't say Benotto was just used on cheap bikes because that would be like saying guys like Bernard Hinault and Greg Lemond rode cheap bikes to their Tour de France wins back in the 80's, since their bikes always had Benotto tape (or something similar looking) on the bars. Usually cheaper bikes back then had some kind of textured thin plastic handlebar tape that tore easily when it got bumped.

I can't remember Benotto tape being 99 cents a roll (actually it came two rolls to a package with two bar end caps). I imagine in today's dollars it was probably priced about what the name brand synthetic cork is now.

79pmooney

Why not wrap the bars with innertube to your liking, then wrap over that with the tape you like looking at? Best of both worlds. Wouldn't be as grippy though.

Ben

Salamandrine 

Somehow I remember. Benotto was about $3 a package. As mentioned that's a pair of rolls and two cheezy bar caps. Bike Ribbon was about $8. I haven't used Benotto since I was 16. It was cool because it was iridescent. Nothing else really. I didn't wear gloves then unless racing, and never padded gloves. Padding wasn't really necessary. I wasn't particularly hard, this was normal. Now that I'm not 16, I enjoy my mildly padded Fizik, and always wear gloves....

Cork tape came out about the same time as aero brake levers started to be more popular than 'normal'. It was good for smoothing it all out. Initially it was really hard to wrap and had a tendency to tear.

I'm going to stick with Bike Ribbon Pro in white as the answer to the OP. Fizik white is an alternative. Another tape to consider is the soft touch Fizik. Looks like the faux suede tape that was big in the late 70s and early 80s, except it doesn't come in white, or brown, or blue...

canklecat

I might do that. The inner tube and/or Velo padded tape are comfy, but nothing to look at. Some metallic blue tape would look good on this white/smoked blue '89 Centurion Ironman.

noglider 

I did like Benotto tape, and I still do. With leather gloves, it's not slippery.