I know they’re not fashionable anymore but when was that memo distributed? I had a long spell of not biking. Did/does anyone like them? Or what was wrong with them?

Nothing wrong with them…

[url=https://flic.kr/p/nBgk6d]IMAG0216[/url] by ScotRoutes, on Flickr

Nice bike scotroutes!

Took mine off the geary bike earlier today to avoid catching on overgrown bushes, not sure I’ll put them back on. SS, though, definitely staying

Use mine more than the grips.

Put them on last year – great for changing body position on climbs.

Wide bars is what happened.

A few pairs on bikes here so must have missed the memo as well – some of (if not most) of our kit is becoming distinctly ‘old school’!

We’ve even got a set of ‘egg’ rings!

I’d love a pair of welded Onza titanium L-bends

I rely massively on them for long (esp hilly, and it always is) mtb treks. I’m sure it’s a fashion crime to mount them on riser bars but they function very well on straight too :-p

Pretty much the same for me too. I have a set of Dual Control shifters in the garage and I was wondering if I’d be able to change gear from the bar ends with them 🙂

Bush grabbers I call them.

I only had some in the 90’s because of fashion/peer pressure. Never really knew what they were for but I tried to used them just to fit in.

I had some on my last bike, which was 8 speed XC, and found them really handy. I’ve found the extra hand position nice on long commutes too.

Now I’m on a ten speed with much wider bars, they’re really not necessary though. The bars give me any leverage I need.

Probably down to less racey positions on bikes. My Nomad is more sit up and beg than stretched and racey so maybe bar ends arent practical or fitting. As someone said above, wide bars also happened.

I still like them on long rides just for the extra hand positions, it’s not that they’re better, they’re just different. But I think wider bars took away a lot of the point, I used to use them for honking up hills but that was mostly because we all had bars the length of a pencil.

I think it caused some people physical pain when I took my lovely Soda with its 710mm risers and stuck cane creek ergo bar ends on it 😆 Gopping.

I’ve got a stubby set of control tech ones on my hard tail, great for climbing as they always have been. Flatbars only though, they look gash on risers.

Both my MTBs have risers and bar ends. I also wear lycra.

Practicality and comfort over fashion.

nuthin’

they are ace on climbs.

Eff fashion, do what’s good for you.

Lovely! 8)

What happened to bar ends?

MBUK decided they were too ‘jey’ [sic] perhaps?

I love my power studs, as above I use them more than my grips.

General rule on retrobike is they are fine for flat bars but a no no on risers. Nearly everyone has risers now so that’s what happened. 😉

Or, geometry has changed, as mentioned above, so there’s less need for ’em.

Still can’t beat mk1 X Light Stubbies in blue. 8)

Note, all (almost) the bikes pictured above have older-geometry and narrow bars – therefore the bar ends are needed to get the right ‘hand-position’.

I use Ergon grips with stubby ends, the liftie in Whistler laughed at them as he took my bike off the chairlift…

I had some L bends in the 90s on my DB ascent, they never made it on to another bike after that though so I’d say they were drifting out of favour by about 95-96 perhaps…

To a certain extent MTB “fashion” happened and their associations with XC racing when DH and trail type riding was more en-vogue and we were all fitting shorter stems and riser bars…

TBH these days they probably wouldn’t be much use to me, except if I was building a MTB up for touring or bikepacking, I can see the benefits of having a flat bar with bar ends for churning out miles on a laden MTB…

Note, all (almost) the bikes pictured above have older-geometry and narrow bars – therefore the bar ends are needed to get the right ‘hand-position’.

not me!

780mm bars, 70mm stem, 140mm Revs.

what they do is enable you to open out your chest, change your stance and give you more leverage on the ends of the bars.

Good for muscling the bike up the hill with a 1×10.

I like what works.

I don’t get this either – what they’re great for is rotating the wrist to a much more comfortable position. Ergon grips and the like help, but for climbing there’s nothing like having parallel grips to pull on.

bencooper – Member
…but for climbing there’s nothing like having parallel grips to pull on.

Which is why dropbars are so good… 🙂

(But a lot of faff to fit on an mtb)

Which is why dropbars are so good…

(But a lot of faff to fit on an mtb)

True story: when I was young and foolish, John Tomac started racing with drop bars. I wanted to do that, so fitted drops to my British Eagle. Then I found that the STI brake levers were too far away, so I bent the brake levers to fit.

A year or so later, I took the drops off and put flat bars back on – and of course the brake levers were now touching the bars, so I bent them back.

First big downhill, pulled the brakes hard, and both brake levers snapped off. That’s when I learned about metal fatigue 😉

Which is why dropbars are so good…

(But a lot of faff to fit on an mtb)

you’ve got a CX/gravel bike, surely?

Left in the 90’s thankfully 😉

….what they’re great for is rotating the wrist to a much more comfortable position. ….for climbing there’s nothing like having parallel grips to pull on.

This.

I find that without the option of turning my palms inwards I get something akin to Tennis Elbow. So I have Fleegle bars fitted with bar ends, and a second set mounted on the bend inboard of the levers. Fashion Police be damned, it works for me!

As for the common ‘they snag on vegetation’ argument, I really don’t get this. They don’t make the bar any wider, and I’d rather smack a bar end into a tree than my knuckles any day of the week. 😉

As for the common ‘they snag on vegetation’ argument, I really don’t get this. They don’t make the bar any wider

I’ve had a couple of falls as a result of them getting snagged on brambles and the like. I don’t know whether or not a non-bar ended bike would have fared better in the same circumstances but I haven’t had the same style of crash on the bike without them.

I still use them for all the reasons given above and, as a few have mentioned, spend more time on them than the grips. Well, sort of palm on bar plug/fingers on bar end kinda style, if you get my drift.

I have bar ends mounting inboard of my grips. Reasons are snagging, risk of damaging the end of the bar if the bike goes down hard on the bar end and so I can use the brakes and shifters when using them. They feel great and put me in a nice position for slogging up climbs. My wrists are screwed from breaking them so i spend most of a ride on them, just switching to the normal grips when I am in twisty or downhill stuff.

bars were originally racey narrow and bar ends gave leverage and also different positions for long grinding climbs. They were essential, extra leverage on short climbs and extra positions for long climbs, where open chest position was often more comfy.

Now bars have grown wider and wider and they largely cover these other positions. We are all unique, our bikes are also unique, so its no shock people still add them.

I rebuilt a retro bike with original Answer Hyperlites recently and was quite shocked at the narrow low position… it brought back a lot of painful memories! I’m looking ofr matching Answer barends if anybody has any.

Cane Creek Ergo bar ends are the way forward (and have been since the end of the 90’s). Wouldn’t be without mine.

Nearly every pic with them in this thread the bike seems to look more like a tourer/hybrid owned by the over 50’s than a MTB . Maybe that’s why MTB’ers who just rag their bikes round the woods/trail centres don’t see the need them?
The MTB equivalent of the Zimmer frame.