I've wrapped and rewrapped plenty of bars before, but only with mechanical brakes. Do you have to just accept a lot of bulkiness where the hose comes in or is there a trick to it I'm not aware of?
I feel like either I'm coming up too high on the shifter and covering the whole side in tape, or I try to go lower and there's a gap on the lower inner side near the short piece covering the clamp. I'm tempted to just do the former version and cut a small piece out where it's bulkiest, but thought it'd be best to ask around first in case there's something I'm missing…
Levers are GRX, bar tape is Brooks' rubber (so pretty big and bulky as it is, compared to foam tape…).
by jarvischrist
3 Comments
this is the kind of situation where the ‘double-sided tape of shame’ comes into play.
typically I wrap high but I was wrapping some really bulky comfort grip stuff recently and it just wasn’t having it. fortunately I had some thinner stuff with a similar pattern so I managed to splice them together in a surprisingly decent looking setup
I have Campag hydro levers and I found that really don’t like tape under the rubber portion. It was not easy to wrap the bars, especially with my preference for classic bend bars (might be easier if I used a modern, compact bend). I had to do a bit of trial and error to get the tape to the right place under the lever, and then wrap around to the very rear of the body while also not leaving a ridiculous gap near the clamp.
I used to have 105 hydraulic levers and they were easier to wrap, but my technique was still to get the tape pretty high under the lever, then wrap the back 10-15 mm of the lever (kind of where that notch is to the right of the hose port). At least Shimano’s levers and hoods allow for some tape under the rubber. Campag’s levers just didn’t feel right until I had almost none.
Cutting the tape is always a little risky, it can rip under tension.
I use electrical tape all the way up to the hydraulic fitting. That (obviously) does nothing to reduce the bulk, but it does smooth out the feel of the “vein” lump.
Modern brifters have so many little hood retention tabs that it’s often impossible to “cover the whole side in [bar] tape” as you’ll prevent a retention tab from fitting into the brifter body, and **that** causes the worst sort of lump.