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Rivendell’s Meisha’s grips: Doesn’t perxactly roll off the old tongue does it? Well, never mind, these are the finest grips made for a very specific sort of bike set up and rider type. If you fit into the parameters, get a pair and channel your inner fly fisher-person. The Meisha grips featured here are the ones with the cut outs and the open backside. These weird cut outs facilitate a bar end shifter: the housing runs in the channel down the length of the grip, the housing is secured with twine wrapped around the recessed groove that runs around the grip. The end is open so you can install a bar end shifter pod. So who are these for? Riders who want a comfortable, natural looking and feeling grip, run bar end shifters on alt bars.
If you are hard on your bike, IE you drop it rather than lean it, or are prone to crashing or piling your bike up in a bike pile outside the local saloon, these grips do not suffer impacts well. That’s not to say they are not durable for regular riding. In fact, they’re incredibly long wearing. Cork grips will last a decade of normal use or longer, unlike a rubber grip, which will wear out and get all gummy and gross like the bottom of your desk in 3rd grade.
If you occasionally throw some fresh shellac on these grips, they’ll look better and better with age. Just don’t drop the bike on them. It’s not that hard. I’m clumsy, and drop tools constantly, but I never drop my bike on its bars.
These grips are not grippy, so they’re not ideal for off road riding. But if you ride swept back bars, on dirt roads or pavement, and use bar end shifters and you don’t drop your bike, get them, you can thank us later.
Installation instructions:
- Shellac the outside with clear or amber shellac before installing the grips. Use less shellac than you think you need, it drips and runs if there is too much. Like, try it with 1/6th what you think you will need. Let it dry completely then add another layer. Don’t do more than 3 layers, or it gets somehow both slick and tacky.
- Install your bar end shifters loosely and get the shifter paddle oriented how you want it.
- Mark the bar with a sharpie where the cable exits the shifter and runs under the bar.
- Remove the shifter
- Take a small file and score the end of the bar where the sharpie mark is, so that when you install the grip, you have a score mark to line up the groove in the grip with the cable path.
- Get a clean, lint free rag handy.
- Spray Super 77 spray glue into the grip, generously. That’s like three 1 second bursts, enough so it’s kinda bubbly in there. Do one grip, install it, then do the other.
- Install the grip, and quickly wipe off excess glue. It’s fine if some is inside the bar, but you wanna get the stuff that’s bubbling up on the outside of the bar, or coming out through the grip pores.
- You have maybe 30 seconds to align the grip before the glue starts to set. Line up the grip cable groove with the score mark you made. Install the other grip, let it dry, rock and roll.
